Are you a highly visual thinker? When you write, does it sometimes feel like you're struggling to craft a prose adaptation of the screenplay version of the movies in your head? We live in a media-saturated culture; many writers learned the fundamentals of storytelling from films and TV, and that legacy can be a challenge. We over-describe, emphasize sight at the expense of other senses, and sometimes write what sounds like stage direction. Recovering filmmaker James Irwin shares how he dealt with this, and offers tips on how you can too.
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JAMES IRWIN is the author of the novels Nina's Friends and Lucky Guy, and his short pieces have recently appeared in Brevity, Big Windows Review, and Bay to Ocean Journal. Long before turning to writing full-time, he was an award-winning filmmaker and media critic. Awards include the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, National Endowment for the Humanities, Gotham Writers Workshop, and Rockefeller Foundation. He lives in northern New Jersey.