Tilt/shift Sunday..

..Yeah, I’ve posted this before, a long time ago – in fact, it was this photo that first piqued my interest in this whole tilt/shift business..

Santa Monica pier, by Olivo Barbieri. And the good news, at least for me, is that I’m off to revisit it this very afternoon..

Kurt Vonnegut’s ‘Creative Writing 101′..

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

4. Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.

5. Start as close to the end as possible.

6. 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.

7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

8. 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.

 

{..of course, he’s talking about writing fiction, but I think that most of these are applicable to pretty much any creative endeavour. And I think that, for me, one of them is much more important than all the others..}

Harper

.. I’m currently keeping lousy company.. as bad as there is in L.A., and that’s as bad as there is.. anyway, here’s Paul Newman in Harper, as requested in recent comments..