Skills
Enhance your writing skills with practical advice and techniques. This section covers everything from grammar and style to advanced composition strategies.
Archetypal Authenticity
This article introduces ‘Archetypal Authenticity’ as a new theoretical concept for analyzing media characters. Synthesizing primary works from Carl Jung, Charles Taylor, Lionel Trilling, Erving Goffman, Guy Debord, and Jean Baudrillard, it argues that Wednesday Addams’s cultural resonance stems from her embodiment of an inwardly-defined self that offers a potent form of resistance to the performative demands of digital culture.
Architects of Reality
This essay deconstructs John Milton’s timeless maxim from Paradise Lost through the modern, integrated lens of cognitive psychology and Stoic philosophy, arguing that our subjective experience is an actively constructed reality.
Authenticity Decay
This essay argues that large-scale institutional decay is not simply a top-down failure, but an emergent property of a personal crisis. By synthesising literary insight with cognitive science, this essay shows how private inauthenticity fuels public corruption, a feedback loop this article defines as Authenticity Decay.
Classic Composition Assignments
Four practical writing assignments for mastering paragraph and composition skills, based on the foundational rhetoric of Scott and Denney.
Common Traits Of Successful Writers
What do great writers have in common? This article explores the universal habits that lead to success and helps you choose your path, whether it’s through a formal writing program or the school of life. Learn the principles of craft and find your own writer’s compass.
Memory, Archive, and Story
Synthesizing insights from media theory and philosophy, this article traces how storytelling functions as society’s primary memory technology. It examines the evolution from the communal memory of oral cultures (Ong), through the rise of textual history and ‘sites of memory’ (Nora, Benjamin), to the anxieties and opportunities of the digital archive (Derrida, Hayles), arguing that writers remain the essential curators of collective identity.
Paragraph Writing Guide
Explore the foundational principles of paragraph construction and composition, updated for today’s writers. Based on the 1909 rhetoric by Scott and Denney.
The Author as Architect
This article reframes Arnold Bennett’s 1914 classic, ‘The Author’s Craft,’ not just as timeless advice but as a pivotal historical document. It explores how Bennett’s ‘blueprint’ for storytelling codified the values of literary realism and became the necessary foundation that modernist writers like Virginia Woolf would famously challenge and dismantle.
The Cognitive Fire
This article argues that universal story patterns are a product of our cognitive architecture. It frames narrative as a ‘cognitive fire’—a tool for social cohesion that is now being weaponized, demanding a new form of ’narrative literacy’ to preserve our collective future.
The Cultural Endocannabinoid System
Moving beyond the ’narrative immune system’ metaphor, this analysis argues that #1 bestsellers function like a cultural endocannabinoid system—a sophisticated homeostatic network for regulating collective anxiety. It introduces a typology of bestsellers as Cognitive Antipyretics, Narrative Steroids, and Cultural Adaptogens, and traces the ‘Great Modulation’ (1995-2005) that shifted culture from shared narratives to algorithmically-modulated feeds. The conclusion prescribes ’narrative hygiene’ as an essential civic skill for maintaining cognitive sovereignty.
The Emotional Code
This article reframes timeless literary quotes not as mere artistic expressions, but as ‘Cognitive Alleles’—functional algorithms for navigating life’s most complex challenges. By synthesizing literary analysis with cognitive science and evolutionary psychology, it decodes how literature provides a powerful, open-source technology for being human.
The Gravity of Story
This article argues that universal narrative patterns, like the hero’s journey, are emergent properties from a co-evolutionary loop between our cognitive architecture (e.g., the Default Mode Network) and social necessity. Archetypes function as a ‘cognitive technology’ for solving adaptive problems and enabling large-scale cooperation.
The Human Connection
Moving beyond simple stylistic advice, this article analyzes why a ‘human voice’ in writing has become a strategic necessity. Integrating insights from cognitive psychology, communication theory, and modern publishing, it frames authenticity as a core tool for audience engagement in a world saturated with AI-generated content.
The Invention of the Block
This article analyses ‘writer’s block’ not as a timeless affliction but as a modern phenomenon. Integrating literary history, cognitive science, and sociology, it argues that creative stasis is a product of Romantic ideals of authorship, market pressures, and predictable psychological states like performance anxiety.
The Paper Trail of Ideas
This in-depth article uses the metaphor of a ‘paper trail’ to demystify academic attribution. It clearly defines citations, references, and sources, using a running example to illustrate the concepts. Learn why citing is crucial for academic integrity—even for AI-generated content—and master the best practices for creating a trustworthy paper trail for your ideas.
The Proximity Paradox
This article introduces the Proximity Paradox framework to explain divergent reactions to AI in writing and acting, grounded in embodiment, economic visibility, and authenticity, with attention to labor, culture, and performance theory.
The Storyteller's Art
By placing J. Berg Esenwein and Mary Davoren Chambers’ 1913 text in dialogue with modern cognitive science and media theory, this article reframes the ‘art’ of storytelling. It argues that mastery is no longer about adhering to fixed forms, but about cultivating ‘Narrative Plasticity’—the ability to create stories that can live, adapt, and evolve across multiple platforms and cognitive frameworks.
The Storytelling Animal
This article argues that storytelling is the core cognitive mechanism shaping human thought. Integrating insights from neuroscience, psychology, and anthropology, it demonstrates how narrative functions as a mental simulator for social and ethical reasoning.
The Symbiotic Author
This article analyses generative AI not as a replacement for writers but as the next major writing technology after the word processor. Drawing on media theory and cognitive science, it argues AI is reorganizing the creative process, shifting the author’s primary role from text generation to the direction of a sophisticated human-machine partnership.
The Textual Workplace
This article reframes ‘general writing skills’ not as simple etiquette, but as a critical technology for navigating the modern workplace. Synthesizing classic writing advice with cognitive psychology and organizational theory, it shows how clarity, voice, and purpose have become essential tools for managing information, relationships, and power in a digital-first world.
The Unreliable Narrator
This article breaks down the concept of the unreliable narrator, a storyteller whose credibility is compromised. Tracing its origins from the critic Wayne C. Booth back to the tales of Edgar Allan Poe, it categorizes narrators into types—the Deceiver, the Madman, the Naif, and the Self-Deceiver
The Writer's Prime Directive
This article reframes writer’s block not as a personal failing but as a cognitive-cultural feedback loop. It argues that the Romantic myth of the ‘solitary genius’ creates psychological pressure that triggers cognitive shutdown. By analyzing common remedies through this lens, it offers a ‘Prime Directive’ for writers: facilitate the creative process without interference.