Are Unintended Themes Undermining Your Story?
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 find and fix the mixed messages undermining our story’s themes.
Pin ItCharacters: More Than Just Imaginary People — Guest: Damon Suede
Characters inhabit every story, and yet we might not have thought deeply about what they are, what they mean for our story, and how we can use that knowledge to create characterization. Today, author Damon Suede shares his insights.
Pin ItWriting Craft Master Lists: Filling in the Blanks—Theme Development
We’ve been working to ensure my mega-lists of writing craft skills for story development, line editing, and copy editing are as complete as possible. Today, we’re diving into a deeper explanation of theme development.
Pin ItWriting Craft: Master List of Story Development Skills
Learn what skills to study with my master list of Story Development skills. What craft skills do we need to understand and be able to apply to develop a story and characters?
Pin ItGenre -Is- Worldbuilding
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.
Pin ItStory Tropes: What’s the Subtext?
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.
Pin ItStory Tropes: Lazy or Helpful?
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.
Pin ItThe Most Important Question in Storytelling: “Why?”
A common problem—even in traditionally published books—is Missing Motivations. A character’s goal can feel irrelevant if readers don’t understand why they have that goal. Or a character might seem stupid or unlikable if readers don’t know why they’re acting a certain way.
Pin ItHow to Make Our Story Feel Meaningful
Story is different from plot, but sometimes we can have lots of plot ideas, and we might not be sure if—or how—we can pull those together into something that feels like a story. Let’s get some tips…
Pin ItHow Does Our Writing Affect Readers?
Given world events, many people want an escape right now. Our writing—our stories—can give readers a breather, a chance to recover, an opportunity to regroup and build up strength or defenses. The crazier the world, the more the world needs our stories.
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