In 2014, chemist Floyd Romesberg, of the Scripps Research Institute, synthesized a new pair of artificial nucleotides and got a cell to accept them as part of its genetic code. In metaphorical terms, ...

What’s the most persuasive way to convey a message? Many writers say, “Tell a story!” Nothing hooks like narrative. I’ve said so myself. But research shows stories have a rival for hooking power: ...

Marble bust of Aristotle. Public domain. Metaphors are not user-friendly. They are hard to find and hard to use well. Unfortunately, metaphor is a mainstay of good lyric writing; indeed, of most ...

In The Writing Life, Annie Dillard commented on her experience of writing from a variety of angles, sometimes crystal clear, sometimes opaque. She’s a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and poet who ...

“Without goals, and plans to reach them, you are like a ship that has set sail with no destination” — Fitzhugh Dodson, clinical psychologist “A committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and ...

Metaphors bridge us from the known to the less known. Some metaphors are more like highways than bridges, as in this piece by Austin Kleon on soup. “Here’s the writer Charlie Fletcher: ...