Writing for Emotional Impact
Advance dramatic techniques to attract, engage, and fascinate the reader from beginning to end
by Karl Iglesias
The thing is, we can learn so much from each other. This keeps coming home to roost in my
consciousness. I started a critique group at our local library and worried that a free
get-together of writers of every ilk would be a disaster. I was wrong. I took a class in
poetry thinking it was a futile effort. It did wonders for my poetry, but it also helped
my novels and short stories.
I'm telling you this because if you're reading this review you are undoubtedly a writer
or want to be one. Writing for Emotional Impact is for you, even though the author,
Karl Iglesias, is a screenwriter. It is unfortunate that in the first few chapters he
writes mostly as if his book is only for those who write for the big screen. He declares
this is not a how-to book, that readers should know the rudiments of screenwriting before
they delve into it, but I beg to differ. I think the earlier in one's career a writer
reads this book, the more she or he will get from it. It's easier to start out right than
break bad habits. Besides that, screenwriters know stuff about impact and structure the
rest of us urgently need.
Iglesias's language is a model for writers. Remember, this is a nonfiction book and
if by example it coaxes even a few nonfiction writers to crank up their image skills,
they will be better for it. One of my favorite sound bites from this author is simple -both
as an idea and as an image- but so right on. He tells us to "Build a wisdom library." No,
I'm not going to tell you how to do that, but Iglesias will.
If you aren't yet convinced, I'd like to direct you to the chapter on "Twelve Ways
to Increase Your Idea's Appeal." Some artists may, of course, choose to ignore advice
like "choose a popular genre" but if they give it a chance, their literary reality may
head up, up, up, to the place where thousands upon thousands read our work and love it. |
The Book |
WingSpan Press |
2005 |
Paperback |
1595940286 |
Self-Help/Writers |
More
at Amazon.com |
Excerpt |
NOTE: |
The Reviewer |
Carolyn Howard-Johnson |
Reviewed 2006 |
NOTE: Reviewer Carolyn
Howard-Johnson is the award-winning author of This is the Place, Harkening: A
Collection of Stories Remembered, The Frugal Book Promoter: How to Do What Your
Publisher Won't -the 2004 winner of USA Book News' Best Professional Book of the Year-
and a recently published chapbook of poetry titled Tracings. |
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