February 17, 2013 – 6:27 am
Every story has a beginning, a middle, and an ending. That seems like a pretty obvious statement, until you start looking at all the different ways of analyzing stories: the three-act structure, the four-act structure, the five-act structure, the four-acts-plus-teaser structure, linear, nonlinear, parallel running scenes, reverse parallel scenes…the list goes on and on, and [...]
November 28, 2012 – 6:22 am
Most novels have three parts: beginning, middle, and end. At least, that’s what Aristotle said, and who am I to argue with a guy whose writing advice has been taken seriously by folks for the last 2000+ years? Today I want to talk about the end. First off, let me point out that the end [...]
October 7, 2012 – 6:02 am
Today I decided to talk about frame stories. “Frame story” is a bit of a misnomer; it’s actually short for “story with a frame,” and it’s a very specific story structure in which the opening (whether that’s the prologue, Chapter One, or the first scene) and closing (whether that’s the epilog, last chapter, or last [...]
One of the things about writing is that if you want to improve, you have to work at it yourself. Nobody is going to make you practice; nobody is going to force you to get better. Even taking writing classes is a choice – I’ve known people who took how-to-write classes simply to have a [...]
Before we get to the post, I feel obliged to mention that we’re doing some more blog maintenance tomorrow – might as well get it over with as soon/much as possible – so there may possibly be another short outage. We’re expecting this bit to go smoothly, but just in case it doesn’t, I figured [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
December 15, 2010 – 6:07 am
Having just talked a bit about beginnings, I’m now going to talk about endings…sort of. Specifically, I’m going to talk about chapter endings, because when you’re writing a novel, you end up having to do quite a lot of those. A good chapter ending, from the point of view of a writer, is one that [...]
August 18, 2010 – 7:32 am
From the mailbag:: I know some people who feel quite strongly about keeping to the main character’s POV except when it’s absolutely necessary to go to someone else, but I’ve also seen that rule (like so many others!)broken successfully. It can be so useful to show someone else reacting to the MC. Any guidelines on [...]
November 24, 2009 – 11:26 am
The second most common way of leading into and out of a flashback sequence is by shifting tenses. Most novels are told in what’s called the “historic present,” meaning that the “now” of the story is told in simple past tense (He slept in the library all afternoon rather than He sleeps in the library all afternoon). This confuses a lot [...]
November 22, 2009 – 11:46 am
There are two important things to know about flashbacks: how to do them, and when to do them. Both things can be trickier to figure out than they look. FIrst, a definition: as far as I’m concerned, flashbacks are a way of conveying some background/backstory information as if it were happening “now”. The central story that is being [...]
September 5, 2009 – 9:34 am
The comments on the last post started getting into endings and the escalation of threat, particularly as related to series books, and I discovered I had quite a lot to say on the subject even though I haven’t written a long-running series myself. The first thing is that not all trilogies or series are the [...]
The “different panel” at 4th Street this year was on pacing and structure. I’ve been pondering it since then, and this is what I think (or part of it, anyway): Pacing is how fast it feels like things happen. Not how fast they actually do happen; what it feels like to the reader-this is why sometimes the cure [...]