Genre -Is- Worldbuilding
An article comparing the Arrival movie to its short story inspiration triggered me to see Genre differently. In short, our story’s genre is simply the worldbuilding “lens” we use to explore our story’s meaning.
Pin ItWhere Normal Need Not Apply
An article comparing the Arrival movie to its short story inspiration triggered me to see Genre differently. In short, our story’s genre is simply the worldbuilding “lens” we use to explore our story’s meaning.
Pin ItThere’s no right or wrong answer for how to depict intimacy in our writing—only what’s right for our story. The “right” amount can depend on our genre, our characters, their situation, their emotional journey, and our target audience.
Pin ItIt’s tricky to tie up all the threads in our story’s Climax and even harder to give guidelines for how to write it, but let’s try to identify some story aspects we might want to include.
Pin ItIt’s hard to find an editor we can trust. To help, I’m sharing Part One of Jeff Lyons guest post with the questions we should ask before hiring story help, such as editors and consultants.
Pin ItIt’s time for another post as a Resident Writing Coach over at Writers Helping Writers, and this time we’re talking about how to take the major beats of a beat sheet and apply them to our story’s genre.
Pin ItSometimes, we’ll say that a character is their own worst enemy, such as the “man versus himself” story premise. However, those stories use proxies to provide a face for the opposition. Today, we’re going to dig deeper into this idea of man versus self to better understand the concept.
Pin ItAll great stories are about one thing and one thing only—problems. More specifically? Every good story has one core problem in need of being resolved. Today, Kristen Lamb shares her insights into how problems, conflicts, and antagonists drive our story.
Pin ItA story’s meaning and hidden messages often lurk in the subtext. Subtext flows throughout our plots, characters, themes, genres…and story tropes. Depending on how we use and twist story tropes, we might create very different messages for readers.
Pin ItEvery genre and medium of storytelling uses tropes, and they often have a bad reputation—for good reason. All too frequently, they can indicate lazy storytelling or worldbuilding. But they don’t have to be a bad thing.
Pin ItOne of the many reasons we need feedback is to help us fill in the blanks for things we can’t see or for understanding how others might interpret our words. But what happens when readers see our words and understand our intention, but they don’t believe what we’re telling them?
Pin It