Source Materials for my Storytelling Class


This past quarter, I taught a storytelling class at Miami Ad School with some really talented, enthusiastic first-quarter writers. Here's a list of some of the source materials I used as examples and sometimes just stole from to make myself sound like I knew what I was talking about:


On Teaching and Writing Fiction by Wallace Stegner


On Writing by Stephen King


 The Comic Toolbox by John Vorhaus


Improv Wisdom by Patricia Madson




The Handbook of Short Story Writing, Volumes I and II, by Writer's Digest


Building Believable Characters by Marc McCutcheon


The Moth Stories


This video from J.J. Abrams.

Various lists, such as this one by Elmore Leonard and this one by John Steinbeck

Writing samples from writers much better than myself, including Edward Abbey, James Agee, Sherwood Anderson, Donald Antrim, Roberto BolaƱo, Richard Brautigan, Jon Clinch, Mark Costello, Patrick deWitt, A.M. Homes, Dan Kennedy, Chip Kidd, J Robert Lennon, Cormac McCarthy, David Mitchell, Tim O'Brien, Helen Oyeyemi, J.D. Salinger, Jim Shepard, Hunter S. Thompson and David Foster Wallace.