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 […]
“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 […]
Humans are still better than bots at writing. Here’s why.
I was sitting poolside at a San Juan, Puerto Rico, resort bar, minding my own business, when ChatGPT settled into a barstool next to mine and ordered a pina colada. It was a bold move, considering the sun was not yet over the yardarm, as we like to say in the islands. I took another […]
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 […]
3 Ways To Use AI for Screenwriting (Other Than Writing a Bad Script)
Let’s confront the elephant in the room of this discussion: Artificial Intelligence (AI) screenwriting programs are incapable of producing great scripts. Although there’s a prevailing notion on social media that AI will soon take over the screenwriting industry, it’s essential not to be swayed by the hype of AI writing. I’ve been fortunate enough to […]
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 […]