“I need to read 100 books this year,” our daughter declared at the start of her kindergarten year. At first, I thought this was a misunderstanding, but it wasn’t. Our local elementary school uses the Accelerated Reader (AR) program. They count books read. They check the levels and log them.…
Author: C. Scott Wyatt
One of the difficult lessons for aspiring writers is that realistic dialogue sounds strange to readers and audiences. What is realistic does not seem authentic. Do not write dialogue that mirrors the way people speak. Nobody will enjoy reading the dialogue in a book and nobody wants to hear authentic…
Admittedly, I dislike the stylistic rules of academic writing. Citations, I understand, but style rules should be limited to those rules that help ensure clarity. In science, I want the Oxford comma, for example, so groupings are clear within a list. I am not a stickler for citations, either, as…
What’s new in technology that would interest a broad audience? I ask myself that question the first weekend of each month when I sit down to write “Virtual Valley,” a column for Direct Magazine (formerly Visalia Direct magazine), a publication of DMI Agency that is a newspaper insert and direct mailing. After writing the…
Stories fall into a handful of traditional structures. Many scholars have addressed this from disciplines ranging from anthropology to writing studies. Stories are about conflicts, inner and outer journeys of growth, and there are a limited number of potential conflict models. Likewise, a character either grows towards good, remains the…
We know there were no posts to the Tameri blog for 2017. We had a lot happening, not the least of which is the completion of my (Scott) master of fine arts degree in film and digital technology. We did maintain posting to the Facebook page and to our Twitter…
We should stop telling students and emerging writers that the passive voice is some sort of mortal sin in texts. It is not. Sometimes, the passive voice offers the best way to control what a reader perceives as important. Consider the following reasons to use passive voice: 1. Technical manuals.…
An email exchange brought something into focus that I want to stress to all screenwriters and novelists hoping to pitch a film, series, or novel. A story needs to be unusual, yet obvious. The audience should anticipate some, but not all, of the conflicts and the outline of the story…
“I’m making a movie about a young filmmaker.” “My new play is about a struggling playwright in New York City.” “I’ve written a great book about a romance writer.” And then we have… “My new screenplay is about a playwright….” STOP IT. Please. Stop writing about being a writer and…
Recently, I met with screenwriting coach Jim Mercurio to discuss some ideas and screenplays I was trying to pitch. Jim is a wonderful, highly ranked writing coach and former columnist for Creative Screenwriting. He knows writing and he knows Hollywood. He told me right up front, this is going to be…