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As you set out to live a great story in 2010, remember to create memorable scenes. In movies and in novels alike, you’ll notice writers tend to place characters in visually (or imaginatively) stunning scenes. When we were working on the screenplay for Blue Like Jazz, I’d often recommend our characters talk about something over coffee or in a dorm room, and Steve and Ben (the other two principle writers) would shake their heads to say no. Scenes in coffee shops are boring. Movies should be memorable, visual, exciting and different. Now I see it in movies all the time. Writers place characters on top of buildings, in beautiful parks, on busses that bend like an accordions in the middle and so on. Anything to make the scene more memorable, and thus the dialogue more meaningful. The same principle is true in life. Many of the scenes in your life you remember best were the times you jumped off bridges or smoked a pipe on the roof. Once when some friends and I were embarking on a long paddle in British Columbia, some friends at the camp we were leaving put on giant animal costumes (think mascott size) and jumped [...]

I’ve written my goals for the year: to eat healthy and exercise, to pay down my home, and to dig deeper into friendships. But while those are great ambitions, if I left them as just ambitions, or resolutions, chances are I wouldn’t get them done. Most people don’t stick with their new-years resolutions. But it’s not because they lack the resolve. It’s because their goals aren’t embedded in the context of a narrative. I’ve discovered something better than resolutions. If you’ve read A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, you know I’ve reorganized my life into stories rather than goals. I don’t have any problem with goals. I like goals and still set them. But without an overarching plot, goals don’t make sense and are hard to achieve. A story gives a goal a narrative context that forces you to engage and follow through. People who are in great shape and have their finances in order probably don’t set goals to be in good shape or get their finances in order. They probably set goals of running a marathon or paying off their house. In other words, they think in narrative rather than goals. The goals get met in the [...]