Her self-talk is brutal about how she never follows through on her writing goals, shakes her head at how many vacation days she's taken for the express purpose of writing the entire time only to veg in front of the television telling herself all sorts of loser stories about herself to herself, sinking deeper into despair and the impossibility of her situation. That's all backstory. Her inciting incident in this scenario in her life is when she signs up with me. In the next few months, she shows …
Task Analysis to Creating Exciting Scenes in the Middle of Your Novel, Memoir, Screenplay
When I worked in special education, we preformed a task analysis of school activities children struggled with to determine the hierarchical concepts and cognition, steps and skills needed to master the given tasks in the classroom. Starting with a specific goal assigned by the teacher, we'd break the necessary behavioral sequence into steps allowing for adaption, modification and compensation. Like scenes on a Plot Planner, each step sequentially leads to the successful completion of said …
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How to Write a Story Concept for More than One Point-of-View Character
To give you an idea of the sort of help and support every writer needs, a writer watching the PlotWriMo: Revise Your Novel in a Month videos asks on A Path to Publishing FB group: How do you write a concept for more than one pov? Concept Who Wants What? Antagonist Stopping her? Motivation? Concept extraordinaire Jill Corcoran answers with this example: SHOE STUD is a romantic comedy told from alternating pov of the descendants of rivaling shoe dynasties in which Steve, a …
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Dramatic Action Inciting Incident and Character Emotional Development Dark Night
A writer asks: isn't the inciting incident of an example I use -- the Pulitizer Prize winning The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt -- when he steals the painting?Yes, the dramatic action inciting incident is when he steals The Goldfinch in the museum. His action energizes the external action, changing the ordinary to the dramatic -- thus inciting the dramatic action plot.I was describing just prior to her question the scene that occupies the all important 1st Energetic Marker: the End of the …
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Plot Tips for Introverts: How to Survive a Writers Conference
I muse out loud why the heck I ever agreed to leave my tiny paradise for a crowded plane ride smack into hundreds of anxious, eager, confident, quaking writers. Quaking myself in anticipation of my presentation, I question the emotional cost of forcing oneself to be something we're not inherently pre-disposed to be.Quietly listening to me moan, the serenely beautiful and thoughtful literary agent Danielle Smith from Red Fox Literary Agency recommends Susan Cain's Quiet: The Power of Introverts …
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