How Can We Recognize a Scene vs. a Sequel?
It’s time for another post as a Resident Writing Coach over at Writers Helping Writers, where we’re exploring how to balance scenes and sequels.
How Can We Make Scenes Feel Stronger with Sequels?
Is a scene’s sequel—the reaction to a scene’s events—part of the scene? Or are they ever independent (and if so, how do we make them stronger)?
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How to Create Scene Endings that Hook Readers
We’ve been talking about the difference types of transitions we might create between scenes and plot events. Today, we’re focusing on the types of sentences that will strengthen our scene endings (and thus our scenes).
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Cause and Effect: Understanding Story Flow
In the real world, the cause of something happens before the effect. But in writing, we can put words into any order we want, which might leave the reader confused. If they have to reverse events in their head, they’re probably no longer immersed in our story. Not good.
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How to Strengthen Emotions in Our Writing
Want to avoid flat, unemotional writing? We have to match our characters’ emotional reactions to the stimulus, whether big or small.
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Fix 4 Common Writing Problems with “The Emotion Thesaurus”
A couple of weeks ago, Becca Puglisi, one of the co-authors of the fantastic Thesaurus books, shared her tips for using the new The Positive Trait Thesaurus and The Negative Trait Thesaurus books. Her advice can help us develop our characters at all stages of planning, drafting, and editing. But the […]
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Actions and Reactions: The End-All-Be-All of Storytelling
A story’s narrative is made up of a chain of actions (motivation/cause) and reactions (response/effect). The cause-and-effect chain, whether at the scale of story acts or sentences, creates our narrative drive: Is the story leading somewhere?
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Does Every Scene Need a Goal?
I love when I make my readers think. Even better is when they turn around and make me think even deeper about an issue. *smile* Yesterday, K.J. Pugh blogged about my last post (where I talked about cliffhangers and hooks) and brought up the issue of sequels I briefly mentioned. No, […]
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