Rob Parnell's Writing Academy Blog

  If you want to understand how power really works, don’t start with laws or weapons or money. Start with attention. Who controls it. Who redirects it. Who decides what you look at while something else is happening just out of sight. Distraction is not a modern invention. It is one of the oldest tools ever used by human beings to influence other human beings. Magicians understood it long before politicians did. Writers understood it long before rulers admitted to it. And today, it has become so normalized that we barely recognize it for what it is. Which is exactly the point. The magician’s lesson: the hand you’re watching is never the hand doing the work Every magician learns the same foundational rule early on: the trick is not in the move – it’s in the misdirection . The secret action is usually small, dull, and technically unimpressive. What makes it effective is that you are encouraged to look somewhere else. A flourish. A joke. A gesture. A question. Your attention is...

  The line “If you want to know who is in control, ask who you’re not allowed to criticize” has become one of those sentences that feels as if it has always existed. It appears on social media graphics, protest placards, comment threads, podcasts, and late-night conversations between people trying to make sense of the world. It is often attributed to someone else - Voltaire, Orwell, Twain, take your pick - but it belongs to no one famous. And that matters more than people realize. Because the power of the phrase is not in its authorship. It is in its accuracy. A sentence without a passport Historically, aphorisms like this tend to get retroactively “promoted” to famous thinkers. We like our truths to arrive with credentials. A quote feels safer when it comes stamped with a philosopher’s name. But this line resists that instinct. It is not poetic in a classical way. It is blunt. Functional. Almost forensic. That suggests its true origin is not a lecture hall or a book of essa...

  Democracy does not collapse overnight. It erodes quietly, often in ways that seem reasonable at the time. A restriction here. A silencing there. A rule introduced “for order,” “for safety,” or “to keep the peace.” By the time people realize what has been lost, the damage has already been normalized. At the center of that erosion is free speech. Free speech is not a decorative ideal. It is the load-bearing structure of any democratic society. When it weakens, everything above it becomes unstable. And when it is silenced entirely, democracy does not merely suffer - it begins to disappear. This is because free speech is not primarily about comfort or politeness. It is about power. Free speech is how power is questioned In a functioning democracy, power is supposed to be accountable. Leaders are criticized. Institutions are challenged. Decisions are argued over publicly. None of this works without the freedom to speak openly, especially when speech is inconvenient, uncomfortabl...

  Writers occupy a strange and powerful position in human history. They invent gods, map empires, define moral codes, and give language to ideas that outlive generations. At the same time, they are among the first people silenced, imprisoned, or killed when authoritarian power takes hold. That paradox is not accidental. It reveals something fundamental about why writing matters, why it is dangerous to tyrants, and why collective agreement among writers deserves attention. To understand this, we have to begin with a simple truth: writers create meaning before institutions do . Religions are not born as bureaucracies. Empires do not begin as administrative systems. They begin as stories. A sacred text. A founding myth. A heroic narrative about destiny, order, and belonging. Before there are laws, there are words. Before there is authority, there is belief. Writers give shape to the invisible. They articulate values, fears, hopes, and explanations for suffering. A religion is not on...

  Every writer, sooner or later, bumps into the same unsettling question. If the world so often seems to reward cruelty, manipulation, and lies, what is the point of telling the truth? It is a fair question. A dangerous one, too. Because the moment writers begin to doubt that truth matters, that justice has weight, that integrity has consequence, the ground beneath storytelling begins to crumble. Not just fiction, but history, journalism, memoir, even the quiet act of writing a letter that says what really happened. This is a plea from writers to writers. And perhaps, through us, to the world. Wrong can win. But only briefly. Right, slow and battered and often unfashionable, always wins in the end. Not because the universe is sentimental. But because truth has endurance. Wrong relies on concealment. Right relies on exposure. And concealment has a shelf life. You can see it everywhere if you know where to look. Power built on lies always needs more lies to hold it upright. ...

How Shakespeare Wrote About Power Without Losing His Head, and Why Writers Still Have To Do The Same Every generation eventually asks the same question of its writers: why aren’t you saying more? And every generation of writers quietly asks a more dangerous one in return: how much can I say without losing everything? This tension is not new. It did not begin with social media, public shaming, or institutional gatekeeping. William Shakespeare lived inside it. He wrote during a period when words could quite literally cost you your freedom or your life. The Elizabethan state did not cancel writers on Twitter. It imprisoned them. It shut down theatres. It interrogated. It punished. And yet Shakespeare wrote relentlessly about power, corruption, tyranny, legitimacy, injustice, and lies. He just didn’t do it head-on. Shakespeare Knew the Limits of Direct Speech Elizabethan England was not a place for blunt political commentary. The monarch ruled by divine right. Questioning authority ...

  Point of View Is Where the Camera Sits Writers often confuse point of view and voice because they feel intertwined when you’re in the flow. You’re writing. The character is thinking. The sentences are doing their thing. It all seems like one big magical soup. But point of view and voice are not the same tool. They’re partners, yes, but they do different jobs. When you separate them in your mind, you suddenly gain control. You stop guessing why a chapter feels “off,” and you can diagnose it like a professional. Point of view is the technical choice . It’s the camera angle. It answers the question: Who is perceiving this moment? First person, second person, close third, omniscient, plural “we,” rotating perspectives. It’s basically the lens through which information is delivered. Percival Everett’s novel James is a clean example of point of view doing a big, obvious job. It retells Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of Jim - James - rather than Huck. That isn’t just a st...