Theme is a way of making a series of events which are personal to the protagonist universally relatable to a wide audience. In other words, one doesn’t have to live in a cupboard and be descended from …
Outline
Rising Action | Definitions, Examples & Your Secret Weapon
Rising action simply refers to the series of events that lead from the story’s inciting incident to the climax of a story. In this article I will explore how to create a compelling ‘rising action’ …
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Inciting Incident | Definition, Examples & Your Secret Weapon
When it comes to storytelling, if a reader isn’t engaged within the first 20 or 30 pages, you run the risk of losing their attention and having them move on to something else. So, what happens in …
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Falling Action | Definition, Examples & Your Secret Weapon
What happens after a story’s climactic moment - after the protagonist wins the girl, or confronts the bully, or triumphs over evil? The best stories keep your readers (or audience) guessing until …
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Story: A Journey of Self-Discovery
Story is always a journey of self-discovery “The unexamined life is not worth living.” - Socrates Embarking on a creative endeavor, especially memoir writing, often brings forth a whirlwind of …
The Value of an Outline
What's the point of an outline? Whether consciously or not, every writer is in search of a process. A lot of writers want to dive right into their first drafts and start amassing pages. Though …
The Necessity of an Outline
“The outline is 95% of the book. Then I sit down to write, and that’s the easy part.” - Jefferey Deaver Many writers resist story structure because they fear it will limit their creativity and …
Permission to Write Your Truth
What is the Truth of your story? OK, you’ve outlined your story and you’re getting ready to write your first draft. But something doesn’t feel right. You tell yourself that you’re not ready, that you …
Outlining: The Dramatic Question
Your characters are a function of the plot, archetypes that constellate around the dramatic question. Story is essentially an argument with the dramatic question being the thesis statement we are …
Blind Spots in Your Story
It is human to have blind spots, and often convenient to be in denial about certain aspects of ourselves. This is natural, or, at least, common. Humans are not logical, and stories both great and wild …