Writing Tips: To Build It, Live In It | 083

Are you sitting on a story you have to tell? Jess Taylor, editor and former literary agent, spills the tea about what makes compelling writing, and why people will be drawn to your unique voice.  

Starting with Jess’s early love of stories, he recalls how at age 6 he broke his leg, and books became an escape and imagination a survival tool. Reading with his mother and watching classic movies at the revival house where he worked fueled a passion for analyzing how stories come together.  

But, the academic approach to literature he found at Harvard and Columbia wasn’t as much fun as reading manuscripts for studios and agencies. Working with writers was even more rewarding, so Jess became an agent. Developing and selling material over ten years at Curtis Brown in New York and Endeavor in LA, he found his calling as an editor.  

Together, we explore crafting narrative, developing plot and character, relishing language, and leveraging our curiosity. Jess brings in “incidentation”—a concept he learned from a great TV writer—and why sometimes “telling” over “showing” is the way to go. Then walks us through how to live in a story so it's real to you, to get to the place where your characters make choices before you do. That's how your story takes on its own internal drive.   

You’ll hear about the power of the zero draft (just talk it out!), the best way to test-drive your ideas, when it’s time to work with an editor and how to find the right one, and the evolving role of AI in the writing process. 

The key takeaway: Have fun realizing your story. What's not fun to write isn't fun to read.   

TESS’S TAKEAWAYS: 

• Begin by beginning. You can only understand your story fully by writing it.   
• The art of storytelling is deciding what to include and what to omit. 
• Great stories are not about words and themes, they’re about experiences.  
• Writing is a process of successive approximations. Trust your instincts, but verify. 
• The match between story and storyteller is essential. That's how you test your story.  
• Character and plot develop together when people act and reveal who they are. 
• Cast your characters and imagine the dialogue performed to construct your world.  
• Finding your voice is an experimental process. Writing can be learned, but not taught.  

ABOUT JESS TAYLOR 

Jess Taylor is an editor collaborating with novelists, biographers, memoirists, screenwriters, and journalists.  

After graduating from Harvard, Jess got a masters in English and Comparative Lit at Columbia, then launched into a PhD. Academia and narrative studies wasn’t about the nuts and bolts of storytelling, so he shifted to a career as a literary agent, at Curtis Brown, Ltd. in New York, and then at Endeavor in Los Angeles.    

Representing writers for publishing, film and TV, he focused on working with clients in the development of their projects. Bookending his ten-year run were Peter Hedges’s What’s Eating Gilbert Grape and Rex Pickett’s Sideways, and the movie adaptations of those first novels.   

Since making the move to independent editing, he’s worked closely with fiction and non-fiction writers from Gregg Hurwitz and Nicole Galland to Nancy Stout, Cyrus Copeland, and Tess Masters.  

CONNECT WITH JESS 

Website: https://www.revizion.net/ 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jess-taylor-35a30031/ 

MEET TESS MASTERS:   

Tess Masters is an actor, presenter, health coach, cook, and author of The Blender Girl, The Blender Girl Smoothies, and The Perfect Blend, published by Penguin Random House. She is also the creator of the Skinny60® health programs.       

Health tips and recipes by Tess have been featured in the LA Times, Washington Post, InStyle, Prevention, Shape, Glamour, Real Simple, Yoga Journal, Yahoo Health, Hallmark Channel, The Today Show, and many others.    

Tess’s magnetic personality, infectious enthusiasm, and down-to-earth approach have made her a go-to personality for people of all dietary stripes who share her conviction that healthy living can be easy and fun. Get delicious recipes at TheBlenderGirl.com.    

CONNECT WITH TESS:  

Website:  https://tessmasters.com/     

Podcast:  https://ithastobeme.com/      

Health Programs: https://www.skinny60.com/  

Delicious Recipes: https://www.theblendergirl.com/  

Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/theblendergirl/     

Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/theblendergirl/     

YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/user/theblendergirl    

LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/tessmasters/ 

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