Posts by wetcircuit
How best to keep these occasionally polarizing aims balanced without creating reader whiplash? This is character conflict and it's a good thing I think it's not about which character is "wi...
Save the cat All the standard tricks will still work. Readers can like the protagonist through some simple actions that show he he is a kind person. Allow him to help someone in need, show a kind ...
Do you want the most stories, or the least stories? The ad infinitum of plot lists is probably the book Plotto: The Master Book of All Plots by William Wallace Cook. It's a manic collection of (of...
I'm going with a frame challenge. Not all reveals are a "twist" A twist is new information that changes the meaning of earlier events. This is done by writing 2 plots with the same events. The MC...
You need a major twist earlier in the story. The promise to the reader is that there is a debate about the strange events, and that things don't always turn out as they appear. That makes your end...
Author talking points and author background might give a reviewer or journalist something to write about. 1st-time fiction authors are – publicity wise – a dime-a-dozen. If there is a way to talk ...
Acknowledging that the top answer cautions controlling another person is abuse, and abuse is never cute, I'll try to suggest ways to minimize the issues. Avoid Blame: The lover is not at fault an...
You might want to present the in-story text as a parable which means the story has a teachable message, rather than words like "mythology" or "religion" which imply a spiritual calling. the rol...
Orson Scott Card described 4 types of story he called M.I.C.E. The goal is not to exclusively write 1 type of story, but to be aware which type your story is, and then work to include some of the o...
Hero-always-wins is a trope I wouldn't call this a plot twist. A twist is a reveal. It changes how events earlier in the story are perceived. This is subverting a trope. The trope is an expected...
Allow me to introduce you to a game-changing author who at age 19 wrote a morally complicated "pot boiler" about a privileged jerk who plays god then abandons his responsibility. This novel has eve...
Yes. It's your main character, who is a bully, and wins. There is nothing ambiguous about this. 95% of people are already well aware of it. This is only a story to the children of wealthy people...
Some people need to like the MC, yes. And they don't seem to change their mind just because the writing is good or the situation is original. Me, I need consistent characters that have believable...
Many same-sex friendships are two of a similar "type" who are also competitors. When gendered male, the rivalry might be athletic or conspicuous displays of wealth. Gendered female the competition ...
In Star Wars, Luke Skywalker murders an estimated 250,000 civilian employees aboard the Death Star. The same source says there were over 1.5 million troops aboard who we learn from the sequels are ...
It sounds like you have some specific examples in mind where the whole point of the exchange is the language barrier. It could be an opportunity to trigger empathy in the reader, either as the bili...
A mystery with 3 subplots I'm writing a branching mystery novel. It's more Raymond Chandler than Agatha Christie: the mystery is a driver-of-plot rather than a puzzle for the reader to solve. Foll...
Character POV My interactive novel has Old Cop, Young Cop protagonists with different skillsets, backgrounds, observation of details, etc. The POV switches between them using 3rd-person limited. B...
You can watch almost any "kung fu" movie from the 1970s through 2000 and see "tao masters" waving their arms while various objects – water, swords, dinnerware, tree limbs – go flying and curving th...
Soap Operas are like the Ouroboros, the snake that eats it's own tail and has no beginning or end. In this context, opera is a pejorative indicating too much of one thing (an opera being several ho...
Add another dimension to the conflict so it is not a simple will he/won't he. There is something (a crutch, a flaw) he is unwilling to give up before he can move to the next stage. Committing to S...
They might represent the villain's fate, but in that case they shouldn't come from nowhere they should be almost ever-present like vultures waiting for him to show weakness. This might be why they ...
Write what people intended to say, not the sounds of the words. We don't write character accents phonetically (hopefully). We don't add every "um…" and pause that's used in normal speech. Instead ...
Opening with a no-win action sequence works for action movies. Consider the audience that likes testosterone-fueled adrenalin sequences and their expectation to get to what they paid for quickly. I...
For my graphic novel I have 3 protagonists, each a different type of hero: action, guile, and science/rational. Although it's space opera my story is character-driven, and the heart of it is their ...
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