Today is my mother's 93rd birthday and, as family and friends assemble, I steal this moment, desperate to imprint a lasting record of the love and learning that took place at last weekend's Perfect Your Plot Retreat hosted by SCBWI-Central Coastal California at the Mission in Santa Barbara. Already, the book launch for The Plot Whisperer Book of Writing Prompts: Easy Exercises to Get You Writing has blurred the edges.Lasting impressions:The event was unique for a multitude of reasons, …
Character Flaw: Fatal?
You decide or rather the protagonist decides whether her flaw is fatal. Perhaps her flaw has already killed off something important to her. She doesn't yet admit that to herself and isn't conscious of her part in her own demise. That's coming much later. For now, simply identifying her flaw itself can be difficult to pin down.Prompt #8 provides an opportunity to revisit what you may have already started --a Character Emotional Development Profile. On pages 33 and 34 in the PWWorkbook I've …
Conflict, Tension, Suspense and / or Curiosity
You introduced a broad view of the setting of your story in Prompt #2. In response to the first six prompts you created conflict, tension, suspense and / or curiosity in action scene(s) that involve an antagonist and a romance character, no backstory, and shows what the protagonist does when blocked from her short term goal. A bit of mystery draws the reader to want to know what's up. Without revealing answers and keeping the action moving forward now you can ground the story on a deeper …
Creating Relationship in Stories
Two common queries when a story starts out too slowly and drags."When is something going to happen?""When do we get to the good part?"Something happens and the good part are when the protagonist reacts or acts in relationship to another. Prompt #4 begins the protagonist's relationship with conflict. Prompt #5 begins the romance plot. Something happens and the good part start in the story.Today, I write.I'm taking a survey on Twitter and Facebook (my apologies for not opening the …
The Joy of Writing a First Draft
My hope in providing you the prompts in The Plot Whisperer Book of Writing Prompts: Easy Exercises to Get You Writing is that you'll have an incentive everyday to write forward without going back. Following one prompt at a time is meant to eliminate the need to run back to the beginning rather than face a blank page and instead to fill that page with words.The joy of writing a first draft is that you don't have to worry if your scenes are too long or not long enough, if the character …
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