I’ve talked a bit about the difference between plot and structure, and some of the ways structure is currently being misused (in my opinion). But structure is still a massively useful concept, and that usefulness is the reason behind the huge focus so many how-to-write books and
Read more →Almost all of the references I can find on structure start by talking about the order things happen in. They basically approach structure as playing with chronology through flashbacks and other not-strictly-linear storytelling techniques. Once they’ve said that, 98% immediately revert to talking about one of two
Read more →Structure and plot are getting confused with each other more and more lately. It isn’t surprising. As I’ve pointed out before, writing terminology has never been truly standardized. Many terms, like “viewpoint” get used for more than one thing, and “plot” and “structure” are frequently treated as
Read more →An idiot plot was first defined by James Blish as “a plot that only hangs together because all of the main characters act like idiots.” I’d add “…when they’re not supposed to be idiots,” because there are plenty of stories about characters who are supposed to be
Read more →Who’s telling the story? Unless a story is in first-person, most people will answer “the writer;” if the story is first-person, some of them will say “the viewpoint character.” And they’re not exactly wrong … but they’re not exactly right, either. In both cases, the writer is
Read more →Enough with the transitions – another Open Mic week has arrived! Talk amongst yourselves while I try to reduce the level of clutter in the office…
Read more →Narrative transitions are the second major way of getting characters from Scene A to Scene B. Instead of simply skipping a bunch of time or a change in location, a narrative transition briefly summarizes, describes, or explains whatever the author is skimming over lightly. Because narrative transitions
Read more →In looking back over this blog after the last post, I realize that I haven’t ever explicitly dealt with scene-to-scene or chapter-end-to-chapter-beginning transitions – not all in one post, anyway. So here is that discussion. The first thing to look at is what changes between the end
Read more →Last week, Deep Lurker asked whether I still hate writing transitions. The answer is a qualified yes – qualified, because the question made me realize that this is one more place where writing terminology covers at least two kinds of thing, and they’re very different. Transition is
Read more →Most of my regular readers seem to have realized that the only “writing rules” I believe in are the ones that involve grammar, spelling, and punctuation – and that even those are flexible, if the writer needs to play with them to get a particular effect in
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