A Solid Three-Stage Book Plan
How do you define a solid three-stage book plan without writing a single line of the novel? Abigail Perry presented her Three Stages of a Solid Book Plan at this years Perfect your Process Summit.
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Plotting
Scene and Story Goals
What is the difference between scene and story goals? What happens when these don’t align? Do they exist in your novel?
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Revision Planning with Troy Lambert
One of the sessions of last year’s writers’ summits covered revision planning with Troy Lambert. At Daniel David Wallace’s Revising and Editing Workshop, Lambert presented a solid and concise approach to revising a novel.
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Cure Sagging Middle Syndrome
Explosive beginning, great ending, so why does your novel suffer from Sagging Middle Syndrome?
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Five Plot Clichés to Avoid
If there genuinely are no new stories, only new twists, then what counts as plot clichés to avoid? From Booktuber Alyssa Matesic’s short list comes a rich seam of super-clichés found in fiction.
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Surprise versus Suspense
Surprise versus suspense: what’s the difference? And why does one make for more engaging writing than the other?
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Dan Wells’ Seven-Point Story Structure
Dan Wells’ Seven-Point Story Structure came from the author’s 2010 BYU presentation. Taking his cue from the Star Trek Roleplaying game Narrator’s Guide, wells utilised the Seven-Point Story Structure as a plotting and outlining tool.
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Turning Points and Plot Points
All story structures include turning points and plot points. Whether it has seven, seventeen or twenty-four chapters, somewhere in that structure you hit key turning points or plot points that change the direction of the story. Without them the story is a flat line.
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More Troubles with Prequels
With a prequel novella in the works for my fantasy series, I’m finding more troubles with prequels.
Prequels naturally take place before a story that’s already written. This could be two centuries (House of the Dragon), or a few days (Rogue One). The core problem with prequels is the ‘before-ness’ of the story.
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Where Story Lives and Breathes
Lisa Cron guested on a podcast last year discussing internality and backstory, where story lives and breathes.
Listening back to Joanna Penn’s interview from 2021, writer and coach Lisa Cron asked ‘why does story matter in every book we write, no matter the genre?’
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