The Goodjelly Blog
By Christine Carron
I am a sucker for British crime dramas so I feel a tad bit guilty for what I am about to do: dissect a scene from one (that shall remain unnamed) in order to highlight dialogue techniques that are probably best left to the small screen—and retro small screen at...
By Christine Carron
Sometimes I order books and they sit unread for years. Others I inhale immediately. How to Become an Extreme Action Hero by Elizabeth Streb was an inhaler.
Before proceeding, let’s be clear. I am not an extreme action hero. I once took a boot camp style exercise...
By Christine Carron
In The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact, authors Chip Heath and Dan Heath explore why certain brief experiences jolt us, even transform us—and how we can learn to create such elevated moments in our life and work.
We writers, of...
By Christine Carron
Thirty pages. Thirty pages to go to get through the rough-cut of this revision I have been working on since October. It’s got me thinking about us writers and how, since writing is such a long game, we are in what can feel like a constant state of longing to complete: ...
By Christine Carron
In college, I applied to be a Resident Assistant (RA). I had to participate in a panel interview—me facing off against three senior RAs. During the interview, we were discussing how much I enjoy dancing. One of the interviewers said, “I can’t dance. I have...
By Christine Carron
Many years ago, I attended a session on revision during Grubstreet’s annual Muse and the Marketplace conference led by Ann Hood. A tip I learned in that session remains one of the most practical writing tips I’ve ever received. It was all about what causes flat...
By Christine Carron
The other day, I came across a phrase that I adore: directed reverie. Officially, it’s a therapy technique to help someone release intense emotions. But those two words together struck me as a perfect description of the headspace that helps us writers create...
By Christine Carron
Bee space. A distance of three-eighths of an inch, and the amount of space honeybees will leave open in a hive. More than that and they span it with honeycomb. Less than that and they plug the empty space with propolis. It’s sort of like the bee equivalent of...
By Christine Carron
Today, I looked up writer’s block and found advice proclaiming ten, fifteen, twenty-four, even twenty-seven surefire ways to crush(!), beat(!), pulverize(!), kick-in-the-ass(!) writing block forever! (!!!) (!!!!!!) (!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
Such violent verbs. Such exclamation...
By Christine Carron
I’m close to finishing a third revision of a middle grade novel. The first two revisions fell into place with an almost unreal ease and with each, and I had a visceral experience of both the story getting stronger and my craft skills sharpening. Sweet!
Then I got to...
By Christine Carron
Like old-school record albums, there are two sides to the writing adventure: the A-side and the B-side. The A-side, the Artistic side, is the work we writers do to craft a story that we hope will gobsmack our readers. Often, the A-side is the juice, the special sauce, the ...
By Christine Carron
The past fwe weeks we have explored Whole Brain Thinking, identifying different ways you might use it and layering in deeper meaning and understanding of the model each week. For our final post in this first-ever Goodjelly cycle focused on Whole Brain Thinking,...
