Where Normal Need Not Apply
When we first start writing, we might emulate what we’ve seen in our reading, but the default point of view isn’t necessarily the best choice. How can we know which choice is right for our story?
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It’s not always easy to know how much showing or telling works best for our story, so let’s dig a little deeper into some of the problems with trying to find the right balance of showing and telling in our stories.
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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.
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There’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.
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It’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.
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It’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.
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It’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.
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Sometimes, 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.
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All 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.
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A 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.
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