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Top 10 Tips on Writing a Properly Flawed Main Character

Creating a compelling main character is essential to any work of fiction, but creating a character that is perfectly good in every way can be a recipe for a dull story. That’s why it’s important to make your main character flawed. By making your main character flawed, you can create tension, conflict, and depth that […]

Living the writing life means living with failure

Writing is a hard way to make a living, which is why a whole ecosystem exists to help you feel like you’re succeeding at it. Hashtags like #amwriting provide steady pep talks for people wading through the muck of a first draft. Dubious-seeming ads on Facebook peddle frictionless methods for selling thousands of copies of […]

Epicurus for Our Time

“THE WASTELAND GROWS,” wrote Nietzsche over a century ago. “Woe to him who hides wastelands within.” Since then, the wastelands have grown more indiscriminately within and without. Our social and spiritual lives wither on our cell phone screens. Our cities, habitats, and public arenas suffer from a blight whose causes remain obscure while the effects […]

Three Favorite Lyricists

I began listening to Wicca Phase Springs Eternal’s Full Moon Mystery Garden after I took two road trips through Death Valley, the first literal (in California) and the second figurative (in a hospital). So when I heard him say, “On a mountain under full moon / I could say goodnight and mean it” and then, […]

“It’s translating, not sex,” he said. “You can do it with more than one person.”

Tyler Cowen: “I’ve never been convinced that AI will rise up and destroy the world or turn us into paper clips.” Understatement as talisman When Clare Cavanagh was first invited by a mutual friend to translate the poems of Adam Zagajewski, who died two years ago this month, how did she respond? “I froze, answered […]

ChatGPT is Not the End of Writing

ChatGPT is Not the End of Writing A longtime university president and writing expert advises against banning the new AI bot — but to use it to teach more effective thinking that is purely human A Writer’s Resource, my co-authored college writing textbook, is about to be published in its seventh edition. While finishing the […]

TUCKER ON Writing Well

Over 30 years ago, I received my bachelor’s degree in communications from the University of Tennessee. Despite the passing of time, I still hold dear two items from my five-year educational journey: my framed diploma and a small book entitled “The Word: An Associated Press Guide to Good News Writing” by Rene J. Cappon. This […]

Richard Anobile, Chronicler of the Marx Brothers, Dies at 76

Richard Anobile, a prolific creator of film books whose friendly collaboration with the anarchic comedian Groucho Marx on a project called “The Marx Bros. Scrapbook” turned sour when Mr. Marx sued to stop its distribution after reading his unedited quoted remarks in print, died on Feb. 10 in Toronto. He was 76. His wife, Elizabeth […]

Three Is a More Interesting Number than Two: A Conversation with Maggie Millner

It’s easy to feel happy for a friend who has suddenly, seemingly irrevocably, fallen in love. It’s just as easy to wonder, privately, if they might, one day, fall out of it. Love stories, like rhymes, are initially generative. Both begin with the promise of infinite possibility: the couple–and the couplet–could go anywhere! But anywhere […]

Delivering a message by voice, even an artificial one, can be more compelling than putting it in writing

In this age of screens, smartphones, virtual assistants, and voice-enabled speakers, we are constantly bombarded by visual and auditory suggestions of things to do, products to buy, and media to consume. Yet are all these messages created equal? According to new research published in Psychological Science, the answer is no: Recommendations that are heard rather […]