November 30, 2011 – 6:25 am
When is the story over?
Really over, I mean, as in “this is the last paragraph, and what comes next is ‘The End’ at the bottom of the page.” This is usually some way after the big climax in which the central story problem is solved (they kill the dragon/blow up the Death Star/arrest the murderer), [...]
There are two basic approaches to combining or developing ideas and story: in-depth development, and the kitchen sink approach. These are opposite ends of a continuum, of course; there are very few writers who work strictly one way or the other. Still, it’s useful to think about the extremes before one starts thinking about how [...]
Nearly every piece of fiction has one main character and one central problem. Even when the story is told from multiple viewpoints with an ensemble cast, each of whom has a different important plotline, there is almost always one plot problem that is the problem that the reader wants to see solved, and one character [...]
January 30, 2011 – 6:05 am
OK, you twisted my arm. But I’m stopping at scenes. Really.
As I said, paragraphs are where this analogy switches from looking at building blocks to looking at what you are building out of the building blocks. Consequently, the main properties of paragraphs aren’t so much about the paragraphs as a unit; they’re more about the [...]
January 26, 2011 – 6:52 am
A quick recap, for those who are getting a little lost:
Fiction (and the English language generally) is built up by combining smaller units into larger and larger ones according to various rules and principles, the same way you build large, intricate Lego models by putting a few relatively simple blocks together into more and more [...]
January 23, 2011 – 2:58 am
Clauses are the next step up from phrases, and they are intimately connected with sentences. They come in two varieties, independent and dependent, and the first sort is a sentence, or could be if you punctuated it differently. “He ran, but she escaped.” is a single sentence built out of two independent clauses with a [...]
January 19, 2011 – 6:00 am
Before I go on, I would like to remind everybody once again that the vast majority of authors do not consciously and deliberately micro-manage their writing to wring every last bit of strength out of every word’s position, rhythm, etc. Most of the time, we work by feel - this way feels better/stronger than that [...]
January 16, 2011 – 6:02 am
Every set of Legos has the basic square and rectangular blocks that you build most of your castles and dinosaurs and pirates with, and then a bunch of oddly shaped pieces that you use to make the fancy bits. Last post, I compared the basic Legos to the first four basic parts of speech - [...]
January 12, 2011 – 6:13 am
Words, being the smallest and most basic building blocks of fiction, have lots of useful and important properties. I’ve already talked about specificity and sound; the next really key thing a writer needs to know about words is that they have different…strength or significance.
I define strong words as “the ones people pay more attention to.” [...]
January 9, 2011 – 6:41 am
Fiction is like Legos. It’s built out of a series of different units, stuck together. Each new level of unit is built out of a clump of previous units. The more units you have, the more complex effects you can achieve by moving them around, putting them in different configurations, making different associations, etc.
What units [...]