What’s the Difference Between an Inciting Incident and a First Plot Point?
To get from our opening pages to the rest of our story, can an Inciting Incident story beat help us? How is that beat different from the First Plot Point?
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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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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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Unreliable Narrators: The Pros and Cons
Let’s talk unreliable narrators: What can they do for our story, how can we create them, and what are the pros and cons of using them?
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What Do the Calls for Diversity Mean for Our Writing?
A recent controversy in the writing world might make us wonder: What do the calls for better handling of diversity and inclusion mean for our writing and story ideas?
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How to Bridge the Gap in Your Story’s Momentum
It’s time for another post as a Resident Writing Coach over at Writers Helping Writers, and this time we’re talking about bridging conflict.
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How Can We Make Our Protagonist More Proactive?
Why is it important for characters to be active or proactive rather than reactive or passive? How can we fix a passive protagonist?
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How Do We Measure the “Value” of Fiction?
At our lowest, we might question what makes dealing with all the struggles of writing worth it. How can we measure the value of fiction?
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Story Endings: How to Write a Strong Resolution
Our story’s opening is important for gaining readers, but our story’s ending is what sells readers on our next book. What makes a story resolution great?
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Author Insights: What’s Our Core Story?
The better we understand ourselves, the better writer we’ll be. One way we can better understand ourselves is to explore our core story. What do our stories have in common?
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