Cet écrivain américain a beaucoup dit sur l’art d’écrire et a même conçu un modèle mathématique traçant les courbes des formes archétypales de narrations, un formidable outil de référence à garder sous la main.
Le voici qui explique ce modèle, avec beaucoup d’humour :
[vimeo 53286941 w=500 h=375]
Pour finir, voici quelques-uns de ses nombreux conseils utiles :
- Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
- Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
- Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
- Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.
- Start as close to the end as possible.
- Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
- Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.