Once you have the overarching plot points of your story, the next task becomes placing your protagonist into the novel and writing the beats, otherwise known as the individual interactions, conflicts, and choices he or she will make throughout the rest of the journey. At this point, many writers decide to sit down at their computer and start drafting the novel… Read more →
We’ve entered the home stretch. We’ve done our job admirably. Our audience has bonded to our characters, we know the answer to the story question, and our protagonist (or every so often our antagonist) has come through the climax the victor in his/her struggle for his goal, or at least part of it. Now comes the Epilogue, defined aptly as… Read more →
Jim Butcher sums it up nicely. “Everything you did in your book leads up to this. Deliver on the climax or die as a writer. Simple as that.” So essentially, no pressure. Climaxes of a story are the natural conclusion, the culmination of all the work a writer has done up to this point. The story question gives the novel… Read more →
Every story worth reading or watching will contain at least three overarching parts: a beginning, a middle, and an end. An event starts the ball rolling (the inciting incident), which sets into motion a number of reactions and choices from our protagonist (middle acts and subplots), until it eventually culminates in a confrontation between all invested parties (the climax). Cut any… Read more →
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 →
For a long time, I assumed the antagonist of every story needed to have a maniacal mustache and some type of British styled bowler hat (or at least kept one tucked away in their broom closet). He or she needed to be plotting to take over the world, or sucking the fun out of a high school’s last dance, or… Read more →
The vast majority of western storytelling (and the only type of story I feel any right to comment on) revolves around a central plot, or said another way, the Story Question. Introduced during the inciting incident (more on this plot device later), the Story Question boils down to a fairly simple formula, When x happens to the protagonist, then he/she… Read more →