Beyond the Past: Understanding the Past Perfect Tense
Many writers struggle to use the past perfect tense correctly, so let’s review when the past perfect tense applies to our story and how to use it properly.
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Escape Generic Storytelling by Asking “Why?”
The most important question we can ask to get in touch with every aspect of our story is “why”—even helping us escape generic or cliché storytelling.
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Storytelling Verb Tenses: Past, Present, and “Literary” Past Tense
Most stories are written in literary past tense. What does that term mean, and if different from normal past tense, how is literary past tense different?
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What’s Your Personal Story?
Many are struggling with anxiety, but stories have power in a crisis. Beyond the stories we write, there’s also the story we tell ourselves about our life.
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Backstory: Avoid Info Dumping by Making It Essential: Part 5 — Guest: Kris Kennedy
Once we know what our character’s backstory makes them think they could never do, we know how to show their path of change and growth over the story.
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Backstory: Avoid Info Dumping by Making It Essential: Part 4 — Guest: Kris Kennedy
A character’s backstory reveals what they thought they could never do, which gives us ideas for our plot and making them face their fears.
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Backstory: Avoid Info Dumping by Making It Essential: Part 3 — Guest: Kris Kennedy
A character’s backstory can be mined to add more emotion to our stories, such as by layering how their backstory’s defining moment affected them.
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Backstory: Avoid Info Dumping by Making It Essential: Part 2 — Guest: Kris Kennedy
A character’s false belief is central to a story’s internal arc, and the defining moment in a character’s backstory is key to creating that false belief.
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Backstory: Avoid Info Dumping by Making It Essential: Part 1 — Guest: Kris Kennedy
Backstory helps readers connect to our characters and provides context for their actions, but how can we make it compelling and avoid boring information dumps?
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Struggle to Write Characters? Here’s Help!
As writers, we have to make our characters seem real to readers, but it’s often not easy. So here’s two resources that can help us create characters that seem real.
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