There’s a flow to writing. For most of us, it takes a few minutes to truly get into our writing state. A few minutes before the words come easily. With enough practice it gets a little quicker to achieve this flow, but for most of us mortals, it takes a few minutes to get the […]
It can be strange to discuss the “mechanics” of a story. Main characters, side plots, motivations, arcs, tropes, plot devices… It almost seems taboo to break a story down into building blocks. It can seem too simplistic. To me, that’s one of the neat things about storytelling, that even using a similar set of blocks […]
There are a couple hard truths about writing, and I suppose with the creative arts in general. Depending on how you define it, Perfection is either unattainable or it does not exist. Sure, there are certain types of perfection, like a perfect circle… but that’s about it. Even then, when you start examining that perfect […]
I tried perusing TvTropes to see if they had a Sliding Scale to describe exactly what I was thinking of, but alas, they do not. So it falls on me to write this blog post! Originally, this article was going to be about a phenomenon within Horror and Fantasy, but I think that Sci Fi […]
Hopefully by now you’ve not just read through the other parts of this blog series, but also practiced these things. A writer isn’t a writer unless they write. You will never finish your story–any story–unless you put butt in chair and fingers to keyboard. All of you who have done your practice, feel free to […]
Now we’re on to the larger scales of writing: Scenes. So, hopefully by now you’ve read through the earlier parts on Character, Conflict, and Motivation-Reaction Units, and you’ve taken the time to practice writing some short stories. Yep, don’t forget that second part. Want to be a writer? Want to write a story? You need […]
Now that you have a little background on how to write, how do you get started? How do we go from a blank page to figuring out what to write about? Rather than talking about inspiration, I want to show you a few ways to get started. Today we’re going to talk about two shortcuts […]
How can a writer keep readers interested? Have a compelling main character with goals and flaws? Have a cunning villain who opposes the hero at every turn? Create a fleshed out world that changes and reacts to the characters’ decisions? All of those are good starts! How about killing a main character? Gasp! That’s too […]
Last time on part Part 2, we talked about how Character and Setting give birth to Conflict, which is the “push” for our Character to move through the story. Now that we have our characters and our setting, and have a sense of what direction/goal they have (via Conflict), how do we move the characters […]
During Part 1 of this series, we touched briefly on how choosing a viewpoint character and setting can drastically change the type of story or genre that we’re telling. Also, now might be a good time to brush up on Genre Expectations, if you haven’t read that one. We’re going to continue this tangent today […]
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