Deep POV relates the story from inside our character’s head, and subtext hides meanings between our words. Together, those concepts develop our characters and the relationship between them.
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As writers, we push ourselves to learn new skills and strengthen our craft—despite discouragement, lack of support, and only a small chance of success. We persevere.
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When we want to write inclusively, letting our lazy brain rely on assumptions can lead to problems. Bran L. Ayres is here with resources and tools to help.
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Some writing advice out there is great, while other tips are misleading, impossible to follow, or just plain wrong. Unfortunately, that bad advice can be shared just as much as the good advice. Today, Jeff Lyons busts some of the most common writing myths.
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In Kristen Lamb’s guest post series on antagonists, we’ve talked a lot about the non-evil, non-villain style of antagonists. Today we’re finally(!) focusing on the villain and how we can avoid mustache-twirling by giving them depth.
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In a “man vs. self” story, we can’t just show a character arguing with themselves. Instead, Kristen shows us how to use a technique like in the movie Black Swan—where the outward antagonists represent the protagonist’s own issues.
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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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Every 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.
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In storytelling, we often talk about the arc of our hero—the path of change and improvement they follow while trying to reach their goals and satisfy their desires. Like our characters, we have an arc, and we can take lessons from the hero’s journey of our characters and apply it to our life.
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