Twelve lively, in-depth chapters reveal how following our untrained impulses — our creative unconscious or "Crazy Child" — gives an authentic grasp on writing stories, poems, plays, and essays. Let the Crazy Child Write! introduces exercises that explicitly tap this knowledge and also presents guidelines on how to give, and receive, constructive feedback. This is the first how-to-write text to give full credit to the creative unconscious since Becoming a Writer, the 1934 classic by Dorothea Brande. Matson goes further by developing writing techniques step by step: Image Detail, Slow Motion, Hook, Persona Writing, Point of View, Dialogue, Plot, Narrative Presence, Good Clichés, Character, Surrealism, and Resolution.

Twelve lively, in-depth chapters reveal how following our untrained impulses — our creative unconscious or "Crazy Child" — gives an authentic grasp on writing stories, poems, plays, and essays. Let the Crazy Child Write! introduces exercises that explicitly tap this knowledge and also presents guidelines on how to give, and receive, constructive feedback. This is the first how-to-write text to give full credit to the creative unconscious since Becoming a Writer, the 1934 classic by Dorothea Brande. Matson goes further by developing writing techniques step by step: Image Detail, Slow Motion, Hook, Persona Writing, Point of View, Dialogue, Plot, Narrative Presence, Good Clichés, Character, Surrealism, and Resolution.