About

My background is unique, and I think it matters. As a writer myself, and former film academy lecturer, I’ve shepherded thousands of stories from concept to completion; shaped countless pitches, loglines, and synopses; taught 30,000+ learners through online seminars; and developed a framework for writing emotion-driven fiction.

I believe stories are not character- or plot-driven, but emotion-driven. I’ve identified specific techniques that produce specific emotions (attention, interest, curiosity, anticipation, tension, suspense, catharsis, etc.). When you see your writing marked up for these shifts in emotion, something clicks. You’re no long making characters “likable,” or arriving at “plot points,” you’re grabbing attention, maintaining it, and paying it off.

I studied creative writing and literature at Harvard, popular fiction and publishing at Emerson, and completed coursework in biopsychology to understand how stories affect brains. I wrote How Stories Work: Concept, the first of four craft books in a series; the crime thriller Unspoken (2024), the sci-fi short Virtuoso (2020), and the academic article “Your Brain On Story: A Neurochemical Basis for Emotion-Driven Fiction.”