Michael Jackman, Writer

Here’s a dialogue tip, brought to you by my Writers Workshop Project (LWWP). I hope you enjoy this tip. It’s similar to a presentation I gave recently at one of my Louisville Writers Workshop Project meetings. I designed the LWWP so that writers can not only meet, mix and workshop, but can also receive presentations [...]

Dear Students and Parents: It’s time for school to start again, which includes most people’s favorite subject: writing! I wrote this guide, How to Get Better Writing Grades for the Indiana Univ. Southeast writing department. But I’m sure they won’t mind if you read it, too. Download the PDF file for free from my online [...]

Note: This tip/essay on craft is the result of further thoughts following a presentation I gave on “Advice by Editors and Teachers: Is it any Good?” at my Louisville Writers Workshop Project.
It’s important to consider your poetry in ways other than craft and intention – that is, beyond considerations of line breaks, compression, and imagery. [...]

This tip came to me via a creative writing student at Indiana University Southeast, relayed by his wife, a high school English teacher. Thank you!
Let’s say you’re tired of writing free verse poetry and have decided to try something trickier: formal verse, maybe a sonnet or a ballad. You know that the lines are supposed [...]

Draft dialogue can often end up rather cerebral. I want to suggest that in rendering fictional drama think of dialogue as not discussion of philosophies, but briefer exchanges that are driven by a situation where something dramatic is at stake in the lives of the characters – especially between the characters speaking. Those bigger questions [...]

From the Writers Workshop Project
Tip — Using Vivid Sensory Language
by Michael Jackman
Goal: To learn to use all six, yes six, senses
The craft of fiction involves what John Gardner called creating the “fictional dream” in the reader’s mind. To do so, writers strive to create vivid, visceral writing—writing that powerfully involves the readers’ six, yes six, [...]