Abandonment Issues and the Feisty Heroine
I realise I have two common themes in my fiction: abandonment issues and the feisty heroine. This feeds directly into to character flaws and the imperfect hero. …
Posts on the craft of writing
I realise I have two common themes in my fiction: abandonment issues and the feisty heroine. This feeds directly into to character flaws and the imperfect hero. …
The question every author has to answer: where’s the conflict in every scene? As we all know by now, without conflict there is no story. But what makes a thoroughly engaging story is some kind of conflict in every scene.
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The pervasive violence in my fantasy-action-adventure got me thinking about the writer and the moral compass. Death as entertainment, spectacle and a cheap way to elevate the stakes. Am I a hypocrite?
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The pervasive thread of violence in my fantasy-action-adventure got me thinking about character and the moral compass. I know it’s fiction. These people don’t exist, they never did. Does that make it okay?
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We’re all familiar with the flashback; but what is the art of the flash forward?
The flashback takes us back to an earlier part of the story – usually to fill in backstory we don’t get to see in the present timeline. The flash forward takes us to a later episode in the story, a glimpse at where the story is heading.
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Can you draw your story as a graph? From Freytag to Vonnegut, writers and coaches will tell you stories have a shape you can draw. With a little analysis, you can visualise whether or not your story ‘works.’
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Is your prose stained glass or plain glass? Does it show only the crafted, opaque glass with nothing of the world beyond, or does it disappear entirely as the portal to that other world?
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Acting out the first act is the only way of knowing if your novel opens the right way. There is no single ‘right’ way to begin a novel, but there are plenty of wrong ones. Breaking down your first act will increase your chances of keeping the reader to Act Two.
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They want it, they can’t get it, and time is running out; this is the Mid-Point Plot-Knot.
This is the basis of every thriller plot ever written. It also underpins many more plots of novels, movies and TV. It’s the Gordian Knot of plot.
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Magic defines the fantasy genre, but I have no fewer than nine problems with magic. Sure, you can have fantasy without magic, but some readers will feel cheated. How does magic affect the story? When does it add wonder and when is it simply plot armour?
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