Tag Archive for Harry Potter

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Chapter Eight: Character Design

For the first three-quarters of my writing life, I assumed the best way to flush out a character was to set them in a story, place my fingers on the keyboard, and jump directly into getting their story on the page. Oh, I may have general notions of which directions I wanted them to head, but as for the particulars of the… Read more →

Chapter Three: The Controlling Idea

If the story question is the known, external path a plot takes (you find it on the back-flap of most books or the movie’s summary on IMDB), than the Controlling Idea of the story is the unspoken but ever present truth of the journey. When a writer sits down to tell his or her tale, they are essentially making a… Read more →