Multiple viewpoint stories, especially the sort that are occasionally termed “bestseller style,” have become increasingly popular over the past couple of decades – popular with would-be writers, at least. Some people hear the saying that “viewpoint solves everything” and assume that it means all they have to
Read more →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 →Turning points confuse me. Turning points confuse me. Or perhaps it’s the way people talk about them that confuses me. I’m used to the fact that writing terminology isn’t standardized, and often can mean more than one thing. (“What’s the viewpoint?” can, for instance, mean “Which character’s
Read more →Katherine asked: Could you please share your thoughts on shaping a good story / balancing the form, particularly across a series? If you are setting out to commit a series on purpose, with malice aforethought, the first few things you need to think about are: 1) Do
Read more →Writers use a variety of different metaphors to describe how they think about plot and structure. One that I’ve seen used quite a bit is “beads on a string” – that is, figuring out a plot is a process of lining up a series of beads/scenes in
Read more →Having lots of viewpoint characters is usually one major reason for a proliferation of subplots. Each viewpoint character is the protagonist of his/her own story, and that story inevitably has its own subplots. So if you normally find that your stories have two subplots, and your novel
Read more →Storyboarding is a structure analysis technique that comes out of the film industry, where it’s been used since the very early days to give writers, directors, and producers a sort of visual outline of a film. A true storyboard is a series of drawings, each of which
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