Pieces on writing: screenwriting, work from Glenn Stout, craft of writing & writing for free

It's been over a month since I last posted on pieces with writing wisdom so there's a lot of great material about writing to note here.

About the screenwriting slice of the writing field were two interesting pieces from a few weeks ago with the first a blog post by Brandon Sneed titled "Here are Brian Koppelman's 50+ 'Six Second Screenwriting' lessons, in full. (Updated!)". It was tremendously interesting stuff from Koppelman as a Hollywood screenwriter and followed up on a post Sneed did with 13 quick writing lessons from Koppelman (with that post deleted given the updated lesson list, but my having written about it here). Also with screenwriting wisdom was "How To Write An Awesome Movie, According To Some Of Hollywood’s Best Writers" from BuzzFeed and which featured 17 different writers and directors providing feedback with content under the following headings:

How Ideas Are Born…and Then Stashed Away in Drawers, Creating a Structure, Knowing Your Characters, Writing (Non-Expository) Dialogue, Write Your Own Rules, Writing Yourself Out of a Corner, Rip It Up and Start Again, Ask for Help — and Partner Up!, Dealing with Interference, Keep Writing. And Writing. And Writing.

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Another category of pieces on writing could be lumped together as being by or about Glenn Stout, series editor of The Best American Sports Writing books that come out annually, with the 2013 edition recently released.  From Alex Belth's The Stacks on Deadspin was a first-person account by Stout titled "How The Best American Sports Writing Happens" that featured some very cool stuff about discovering fairly unknown writers and the impact appearing in BASW has had on their careers. Unrelated to the compilation series edited by Stout were two additional pieces of interest with "15 Ways to Survive as a Freelancer" from Stout's blog Verb Plow and a piece for an Indiana University School of Journalism website. "Glenn Stout: Long-form sports journalism is ‘exploding’" was by Ed Sherman and primarily about Stout's work editing the SB Nation Longform site.

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On the craft of writing was a host of interesting pieces starting off with two from Nieman Storyboard, "Storytelling is magic" by Chris Jones at the annual “Power of Storytelling” conference in Bucharest and "Storyboard 75: The big book of narrative", a compilation of great Nieman writing wisdom over the years. Additionally of note were a few older pieces on writing: an interview with Karl Taro Greenfeld for The Review Review, an essay by Seth Kantner for the Anchorage Daily News, and a short New Yorker piece "Notes from Underground: Gay Talese's office" with accompanying three-minute video.

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The final piece on writing to note here was sort of in a category of it's own with Tim Kreider for The New York Times writing the interesting opinion piece "Slaves of the Internet, Unite!" about how writers and other creative types shouldn't give away their work for free.

Writing on kids & parenting - by Greenfeld, Paul, Ripley & Stafford

A couple of interesting pieces lately on the subject of kids and parenting included essays from The Atlantic and The Huffington Post as well as a New York Times book review.

The longer of the two essays was by Karl Taro Greenfeld for the October issue of The Atlantic. "My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me" had some fascinating stuff about the amount of work being done outside of school by his 8th grade daughter in a selective New York City public school.

The New York Times book review was on a similar subject with Annie Murphy Paul writing "Likely to Succeed" about Amanda Ripley’s The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way. I've previously read solid work from both writers and am interested in reading the Ripley book.

The essay from The Huffington Post was "6 Words You Should Say Today" by Rachel Macy Stafford about a simple thing parents can do in talking with their kids and it seemed a powerful and spot on recommendation.

Businessweek features - by Featherstone, Faris, Greenfeld & Vance

Four different Businessweek features that struck me as particularly interesting over the past few weeks were on nuclear cleanup, unemployment in Greece, that well-know electric car maker and a new 24-hour sports channel.

Most recent piece was from the Aug 5-11 issue with "The Plutonium Gang: CH2M Hill Dismantles the Hanford Nuclear Site" by Steve Featherstone. One great detail from Featherstone about this dangerous task was the $33,000 per day cost of protective gear for cleanup workers at the Plutonium Finishing Plant and the story made it feel fortunate there hasn't been a larger nuclear disaster (planned or unplanned) than we've seen.

Another great BW feature that dealt with potential calamity of a different sort was the cover story from the July 29-Aug 4 edition. "Greece's Unemployed Young: A Great Depression Steals the Nation's Future" was written by Stephan Faris and brought to mind his earlier this year piece "Screwed in Cyrus". The detail that stood out the most from this recent story was Faris noting youth unemployment rates (fairly certain the criteria for inclusion is ages 18-25) as above 35% in Italy and Portugal and above 50% in Spain and Greece. These statistics somewhat mind-blowing and scary, especially in conjunction with the xenophobia (that's at least partially related to economic hardship) I've been reading about in various parts of Europe.

The last two Businessweek features to note here both came from the July 22-Aug 8 issue and were on decidedly less serious subjects. "Fox Sports 1's Strategy vs. ESPN: 'Jockularity'" was written by Karl Taro Greenfeld about the Fox Sports cable channel debuting August 17th and "Why Everybody Loves Tesla" was the cover story by Ashlee Vance. Interesting content in both features and related to the Tesla piece was a two-minute video shot inside the Tesla factory in Fremont, CA.

Businessweek features - by Greenfeld, Hannan, Ricadela, Vance & Leonard

Over the past few months there's been some excellent Businessweek features to note here.

The Jan 10 edition cover story was "Can Meg Whitman Reverse Hewlett-Packard's Free Fall?" by Ashlee Vance and Aaron Ricadela. Very solid piece with the additional data point since it's publication being that HP stock has risen 37%.

Two other interesting stories of late were on very different companies in Huy Fong Foods and Walt Disney. The Feb 21 issue featured "Sriracha Hot Sauce Catches Fire, Yet 'There's Only One Rooster'" by Caleb Hannan and Mar 7 cover story "How Disney Bought Lucasfilm—and Its Plans for 'Star Wars'" by Devin Leonard. One company little known except for their signature hot sauce and the other known pretty much everywhere, but excellent pieces on each.

The other story to mention stood out to me both for the subject as well as writer of the piece. In the Feb 28 issue of BW was "Bill McKibben's Battle Against the Keystone XL Pipeline" and I've previously written on and linked to stories about McKibben and done posts on work by Karl Taro Greenfeld who wrote about McKibben and his efforts.

Businessweek & Fast Company Features

There were a few pieces that stood out from recent issues of Businessweek and Fast Company.

The latest BW had two feature stories of note including "A Pet Food Store Fights to Survive Sandy" by Karl Taro Greenfeld. He's one of those writers whose work I look for (along with Ashlee Vance and Brad Stone as other frequent Businessweek contributors) and provides in this piece a thorough and compelling view into the storm aftermath for one wiped out Staten Island business and it's owners.

Also from this issue was the interesting Devin Leonard piece "Is Concierge Medicine the Future of Health Care?" about doctors taking on patients on a monthly fee basis rather than billing insurance carriers for exams and basic services. Very interesting notion with lots of different service derivations and costs ranging from extremely high to quite affordable.

From Fast Company recently a feature that particularly stood out was "IBM's Watson Is Learning Its Way To Saving Lives" by Jon Gertner. Fascinating look at the ever-improving supercomputer (of winning at Jeopardy fame) and it's potential applications in any number of fields including finance and medicine. Interesting in the piece was the description of Watson (with it's computing power coming from software as much as hardware) being positioned for medical diagnosing purposes as a tool providing possibilities and %s of likely success rather than end all be all intelligence. While information from Watson may wind up being better than from a doctor, it could speed adoption of the computer to understate how it might replace a doctor's evaluation.

Two other things of particular interest from Fast Company lately were mention of of a Social Media expert (a nebulous phrase to be sure) and feature story on a well known website and it's founder. The Social Media expert mentioned was Clara Shih and seeing her in the "Leadership in a Time of Chaos" Dec/Jan cover story reminded me of a March 2012 Businessweek piece that referenced her book The Facebook Era. The website and it's founder Fast Company feature was "Not Just Another Web 2.0 Company, Yelp Basks In Its Star Power" by Max Chafkin. I'm fascinated by Social Media companies and how some seem to make much more sense than others... with Jeremy Stoppleman's Yelp appearing to have a lot of staying power.

"Triburbia" by Karl Taro Greenfeld

Triburbia by Karl Taro Greenfeld is a fictional slice-of-life work from a guy who I’ve previously found to have written great non-fiction for various magazines.

I had high hopes for the book based on Greenfeld and found myself captivated by his descriptions of many characters in the book and was looking forward while reading to seeing how everyone would come together.

The web of relationships between everyone was interesting to see develop, but issue I had is things never really seemed to come together in any conclusion. Basically, it struck me as really good character based fiction, but lacking in an additional compelling plot.

That said, there were great characters in the book and I agree with Jay McInerney who in his New York Times review of Triburbia wrote of Greenfeld's excellent description of Cooper, the 4th grade despot.

Businessweek Writing - Greenfeld on ESPN / Stone on Marissa Mayer / Bennett on Social+Capital VC Fund

Three excellent features from Businessweek to highlight here...

The most recent issue included "ESPN: Everywhere Sports Profit Network" by the excellent Karl Taro Greenfeld, whose writing first came across and posted on some 3 1/2 year ago. I've since linked to a few Greenfeld features for BW over the last year or two and just like the other work, this ESPN piece is thorough and interesting. In many ways, it reminded me of the James Andrew Miller & Tom Shales book Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN that I read and reviewed last year. Just remarkable to read in Greenfeld's story of the growth at ESPN with "headcount doubling in the last 7 years to 12,000 employees worldwide" and think of how influentation the company was already back in the last 90's when we we would discuss it in business school.

The two other Businessweek features to note in this post were from a few months back with "Yahoo: Help Us, Marissa Mayer. You're Our Only Hope" by Brad Stone and "Social+Capital, the League of Extraordinarily Rich Gentlemen" by Drake Bennett.

Stone is similar to Greenfeld in that I like and look forward to his writing and he provides a fairly short and interesting look at the former Google exec and now Yahoo CEO.

In the Bennett story, he profiles the Venture Capital Fund led by former Facebooker Chamath Palihapitiya and backed in part by Silicon Valley heavyweights Kevin Rose and Peter Thiel. Solid piece on an interesting fund build on the idea of backing companies trying to accomplishing something good... and yep, in reference to the title of Bennett's piece, the fund backers and leaders have done very well in past ventures.

Writing on Family: by Skip Hollandsworth, Don Waters & Karl Taro Greenfeld

Two pieces of writing I've seen lately struck me as profound work that both trafficked in the topic of family... and made me think of a third piece on family I first saw a few years ago.

Most recently read piece was by Don Waters for the June issue of Outside Magazine. "Chasing Family History on California's Surf Breaks" is about Waters learning about and forming a posthumous connection with a father, Robert Waters, who left when his son three years old. It's heartfelt writing that has a number of interesting elements to it, including the unpublished autobiography a dying Robert Waters left to his writer son as an intended bridge, a love of surfing held at different points by both men, and the younger Waters spending time with surfing legend Greg Noll (heavily featured in the excellent movie Riding Giants) to understand better the father that Noll knew some 50 years prior. Also interesting from the time Don Waters spends with Noll is his interactions with son Jed Noll, as a compare and contrast situation between the two sets of father and son.

The other piece of writing on family that struck me recently was actually one from 2009, but I hadn't seen until yesterday. Written for Texas Monthly by Skip Hollandsworth, "Still Life" is a long feature on high school football player John McClamrock and the life of he and his family after being paralyzed during a 1973 game. Very riveting piece which heavily shows the devotion of a mother and brings to mind for me a quote from the Mike Sager Esquire piece "Depression" (not posted online)... “how much can one man take? As much as need be."

Both stories are excellent work (with the Hollandsworth one particularly emotion-inducing) and the subject of family (particularly family devotion and sacrifice) made me think of a Karl Taro Greenfeld piece from Time Magazine. I posted briefly on it when in when I saw the story back in 2009 and "Growing Old with Autism" (excerpted from his book Boy Alone: a Brother's Memoir was powerful and very personal writing by Greenfeld.

Business Pieces: Larry Scott & the Pac-12 Conference, Nick D'Aloisio & Summly, other stuff...

A bevy of interesting people and companies featured in Businesweek over the past few weeks... and one guy and his startup not from BW, but which bears noting here.

Only feature to mention from Businessweek was Head of the Pac by the excellent Karl Taro Greenfeld. About the Pac-12 Conference and it's Commissioner Larry Scott, it shows how much TV money rules the day in college sports, with college football leading the charge.

Other pieces that stood out as interesting...

- Charlie Rose Talks to Salesforce.com's Marc Benioff on efforts at the cloud-based CRM company.

- Alain Rossmann's Klip, a Twitter for Videos on one of the early Macintosh team and his startup aimed at amateur video on the web.

- Keeping the Sea Safe from Plastic on a new biogradable in water material called PHA from Archer Daniels Midland and the startup company Metabolix.

Finally, the technology blog GigaOM last month featured 16-year-old Nick D’Aloisio and his startup company Summly. The product offering is a phone app that provides a quick web page summary, but what stands out in the piece is the description of D'Aloisio from GigaOM founder Om Malik. Title of Meet the Internet’s newest boy genius indicates what's to follow and below is a pretty remarkable statement from Malik:

"In my life I have met many smart people — Jeff Bezos, Andy Bechtolsheim, Larry Page, Andy Grove, Sergey Brin, Vinod Khosla and Bret Taylor. D’Aloisio belongs with them, I am convinced. Not because he has started the next hot company — who can predict what will be hot? But instead, he is a self-taught polymath, who is so adept at learning from reading, listening and observing. He is an old-fashioned technologist who was born this way."

May 9 Businessweek Pieces: Why Bin Laden Lost / Supply Chain Efficiencies

Some solid content from the May 9 issue of Businessweek.



The lead essay was "Why Bin Laden Lost" by Brendan Greeley and featured insightful writing about Bin Laden in the same vein as the commentary by David Von Drehle for Time which I posted on and linked to.

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Less profound, but also interesting from this issue was the feature piece "Taco Bell and the Golden Age of Drive-Thru" written by Karl Taro Greenfeld.

This was one of those cases where I first took note of a piece based on the author... as I recall reading and posting on Greefeld's "Growing Old with Autism" book excerpt two years ago in Time Magazine). This first Greenfeld piece fit into the category of excellent and important writing and while I don't imagine he saw Taco Bell and Supply Chain efficiencies on the same level of import as autism in his family, the recent story it's an interesting one about the mechanics of a huge business segment.

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Also from this issue were two one page pieces of interest because of the companies and offerings being written about...

- Charlie Rose interview with Netflix CEO Reed Hastings.

- "Otávio Good's Instant Translator" about the Word Lens iPhone app. Program does visual language translation via augmented reality, or layering of new data on top of an image from the phone's camera.

Best Time Magazine Writing: Parenting & Family

Over the last few months, I've done multiple blog posts aggregating some of the best magazine stories I've linked to... including my favorite writing from Esquire & Sports Illustrated, BusinessWeek & Fast Company, and Time Magazine... specifically around the topics of Politics & the Economy. In addition, I've linked to a Sports Illustrated piece on their picks for Best SI Writing.

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With all this, though, there's another category of great writing that I wanted to aggregate in a post... that of writing around family. It's not by design, but all of the best magazine writing I've come across in this area of family has been from Time.

Included in this category were pieces from two of my favorite Time writers. As a cover story, David Von Drehle wrote "The Myth About Boys"... a really interesting piece that basically says "the kids are alright." Additionally, Nancy Gibbs penned a short back page piece titled "Listen to the Kids" about children, tradition and establishing family traditions.

Also in this Family Writing area was an essay by Elizabeth Gilbert (author of the bestseller "Eat, Pray, Love") and a book excerpt from Karl Taro Greenfeld.

The Gilbert piece is titled "A Family Divided by Obama and McCain" and about her reconciliation of differing political beliefs from her father. A compelling read not so much about politics, but rather about this idea of close family members who don't agree on everything.

From Greenfeld is "Growing Old with Autism"... an excerpt from his book "Boy Alone: a Brother's Memoir". All about the struggles associated with his adult brother's autism, it makes one think of the circumstances that some are dealt and also how that impacts their loved ones.

Just great writing all...

Growing Old with Autism Story from Time

Very heartfelt and thought-inspiring article from the latest issue (cover below) of Time Magazine.



Written by Karl Taro Greenfeld, "Growing Old with Autism" is in an excerpt from his book "Boy Alone: a Brother's Memoir" about the struggles associated with his adult brother's autism. It's somewhat painful in that it makes you think of the circumstances that some are dealt and also how that impacts their loved ones.

On a much lighter level, the last page essay by Joel Stein is titled "Give Hockey (and Me) One More Shot"... yea, it's an entertaining read.