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Master the Art of List-Making: Ethan Joella's Proven Techniques for Breaking Writer's Block
by Writing Workshops Staff
6 days ago
In a literary landscape often dominated by abstract maxims, such as show, don't tell, find your voice, and kill your darlings, Ethan Joella has found liberation in structure.
The author of three acclaimed novels from Scribner, including A Little Hope and A Quiet Life, Joella now turns his attention to one of writing's most overlooked but potent techniques: the humble list.
"I remember reading 'The Things They Carried' by Tim O'Brien," Joella recalls from his home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, where he lives with his family when not teaching English and psychology at the University of Delaware. "The reader feels the weight of each physical and literal item the soldiers in Vietnam lug around, and you get to know characters via these items: who carries dental floss, who carries canned peaches, who carries tranquilizers. It made me want to put lists in everything."
This revelation—that enumeration could unveil character with startling efficiency—has become the cornerstone of Joella's forthcoming seminar. While many craft seminars promise broad transformations through nebulous concepts, Joella's approach is refreshingly concrete: examine how literary legends like Susan Sontag, Ray Bradbury, and Elizabeth Strout have deployed lists to create unforgettable moments on the page, then apply those techniques to your own work.
Joella is particularly suited to guide writers through this process because of his dual background in literature and human behavior. Though he insists he leaves his formal psychology training behind when writing, his understanding of cognitive processes infuses his teaching. "Lists help to reduce our cognitive load," he explains. "They feel approachable and low-stakes, so it's easy to get started on them, and they often can lead to discovery, which is essential in writing."
In conversation, Joella shifts easily between analytical precision and artistic intuition, a balance that has earned him devoted students who describe his feedback as both specific and transformative. One former participant noted that Joella's guidance "pushed me out of my comfort zone," while another celebrated having "a new tool in my writing toolbox."
As we discuss the musicality that effective lists can bring to prose—a quality evident in his own novels—Joella's enthusiasm for the technique becomes contagious. For a writer featured in The New York Times and selected for Jenna Bush Hager's influential book club, his focus remains steadfastly on craft rather than accolades. In an age of writing advice that often feels either too prescriptive or too abstract, Joella offers something surprisingly radical: a specific, adaptable method that works across genres and experience levels.
Whether you're struggling with character development, setting description, or simply facing the terror of the blank page, Joella's workshop promises to transform that paralyzing emptiness into something far more manageable: a list waiting to be made.
Writing Workshops: Your upcoming seminar explores how lists can transform writing across genres. What was your own aha moment with list-making as a narrative device, and how did it specifically change your approach to character development?
Ethan Joella: I remember reading The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, and man, the title story absolutely kills it with lists. The reader feels the weight of each physical and literal item the soldiers in Vietnam lug around, and you get to know characters via these items: who carries dental floss, who carries canned peaches, who carries tranquilizers. It’s astonishing, and it made me want to put lists in everything.
WW: You mention literary legends like Susan Sontag and Elizabeth Strout, who have relied on list-making techniques. Could you share an example of a particularly effective list from contemporary literature that illustrates the emotional power this technique can unlock when done well?
EJ: There are so many lists that I go crazy for, but one of my favorites is Elizabeth Strout’s in Olive Kitteridge about Olive’s husband, Henry, who worked as a pharmacist. In this list with the repetition of cheerful, the reader gets to know so much about Henry and his job and the town in Maine where they live. It’s perfect.
Standing in the back, with the drawers and rows of pills, Henry was cheerful when the phone began to ring, cheerful when Mrs. Merriman came for her blood pressure medicine, or old Cliff Mott arrived for his digitalis, cheerful when he prepared the Valium for Rachel Jones, whose husband ran off the night their baby was born.
WW: Many writing workshops focus on broad concepts like "show don't tell" or "find your voice," but yours zeros in on a specific structural tool. What do you think gets overlooked in conventional writing education that makes list-making such a revolutionary technique for your students?
EJ: Yes, we continue to tell students all those “rules” of writing, which are definitely important; however, I think style often gets left for dead in workshops and graduate programs, and along with voice, a writer needs to cultivate a unique style that will separate them from other writers. List-making is so specific and individualized that it really helps a writer to hone this style.
WW: You teach both English and psychology at the University of Delaware. How does your understanding of human psychology inform the way you teach list-making as a method for revealing character complexity?
EJ: I often get asked about my psychology background and how that informs my writing, but I think when I’m using lists or doing any type of creative writing, I’m often leaving the training in social sciences behind and doing what every writer does—trying to understand what it means to be human, trying to show how we survive and what gives us life. One interesting aspect of psychology is that we consider behavior and how people process things differently, so with lists, I think it’s important to examine what you’ve done in your writing from a variety of angles to explore how the reader might encounter the list—will it feel repetitive, overwhelming? Or will it solidify or expand on something that’s important?
WW: In your novel A Quiet Life, there are moments where listing creates a rhythmic quality to the prose. How do you see the relationship between list-making and musicality in writing, particularly for poets who might join your workshop?
EJ: Thank you. Since I’m both a poet and a fiction writer, I think you can definitely see the poetry impulses in my prose. Writing poetry taught me to be economical, of course, but otherwise to be attentive to sound and rhythm, and I think prose writers need to be aware of this, too. I read everything I write out loud, and a list should have a fluid, interesting quality to it as a poem would have. There needs to be movement. If it feels strained or stifling, the list isn’t working, so writing with your ear in all types of writing is so important.
WW: Writers often struggle with creative blocks. Could you walk us through a specific list-making exercise you've found most effective at helping stuck writers break through resistance and why you think it works psychologically?
EJ: I think lists are so helpful in a lot of ways as we work through a piece or an idea. You can get to know a character more deeply through a list, or you can explore elements in a memoir piece or poem that will help you progress from the “talking” of the piece to the important images or details. I think, in general, lists help to reduce our cognitive load. They feel approachable and low-stakes, so it’s easy to get started on them, and they often can lead to discovery, which is essential in writing.
Learn more about Ethan's upcoming seminar, The List-Making Method: Transform Your Fiction, Poetry and Essays, and sign up now to avoid the waitlist!
Ethan Joella is the author of the novels A Little Hope (Scribner, 2021), which was a Read with Jenna Bonus Selection, A Quiet Life (Scribner, 2022), and The Same Bright Stars (Scribner, 2024). His books have been featured in The New York Times, People, and Good Housekeeping. Ethan teaches English and psychology at the University of Delaware and specializes in community writing workshops. He lives in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware with his family.
