The Plot-Device Machine – Motive
A story is its people. We all know that, and that’s why Motive is different from the other Plot Device points. We’ve seen how Movement and especially Knowledge can organize the plot around the...
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Deals, Decoys, and Dirty Tricks for your Characters
Your hero’s trapped by his enemies, no way to run or fight—unless he can take what those goons really want and use it against them. Your villain needs to slip past the police lines to work his sinister...
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The Prologue Checklist
“What’s past is prologue.” –William Shakespeare, The Tempest It’s only natural—you’ve got a powerful story to write, so you open with a prologue. It’s your chance to show off a clever idea, it...
View ArticleDarth Vader Missed It and Dracula Never Tried – Character Plot Twists that...
What single choice could make a story? Sure, we writers have dozens of strengths we might weave into a tale, but could there be one clear decision that pushes it to a whole other level? It’s been on my...
View ArticleWriting a Character Arc – Through Other Characters
If the heart of a story is the conflicts it puts a character through, and especially the choices he has to make… could there be a pattern underlying that to guide a plot into deeper insights and keep...
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Loose Cannons can Lose Your Canon – WHEN Should You Shake Up Your Characters?
Why would a story that rips forward at light-speed pace take a whole first season for what seemed like ordinary short-term TV conflicts? When Babylon 5 does just that (with so much excitement to come),...
View ArticleBeen There Done That? Similar Problems with Writing Similar Scenes
There are stories that rely on their central concept to shape much of their plot into their favorite kind of sequence, and try to make it our favorite too. It could be: a type of action the hero takes,...
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Who’s On First – A Character System for Variety in Scenes
Are you using all your story? All the characters, all the possibilities and combinations that a tale has ready to unleash? On the one hand, it’s a lifelong study—we writers try to make every book dig...
View ArticleA Writer’s Confession: Kvothe’s Ballad
The following is a confession I wrote to myself some Easters ago after a session of reading, that I realize I’d never shared with this blog. It’s word for word as I wrote it then, so make of it what...
View ArticleVideo Gamers as Writers – Twitching Our Way Into Character
Some writers hone their skills by a mix of soaking up lessons from the masters and researching specifics, from history to sentence structure. I’ve done all that… but one of my best tools is playing...
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That Ultimate Buffy Scene – Willow’s Long Walk
What does storytelling mean to me? Sometimes, I have to look back at the tales that make me glad to play in the writers’ sandbox. The moments, and the craft behind them, that have burned themselves...
View ArticleA Jessica Jones Experiment – Take the TMI Test
So Season 2 of Jessica Jones is out. And this time it’s almost perfect. As a show, Jessica… how do I say this? Her first season was the only series that’s ever made me rethink Buffy The Vampire-Slayer...
View ArticleWhat I Write
If you look through my stories, you’ll see there are certain things I try to provide. Here are seven of them. “What do you want?” –That’s such a marvelous question. It can be the seed to a beautiful...
View ArticleThe Fights of Fantasy
What makes a good fight? —In a story, of course, since in real life the best fights are the ones that don’t happen. But what makes a fictional clash worth reading? And we do find them worth reading,...
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