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Hemingway Editor. How to Structure A Story: The Eight-Point Arc. By Ali Hale - 3 minute read One of my favourite “how to write” books is Nigel Watts’ Writing A Novel and Getting Published. My battered, torn and heavily-pencil-marked copy is a testament to how useful I’ve found it over the years. Although the cover appears to be on the verge of falling off altogether, I’ve risked opening the book once more to bring you Watts’ very useful “Eight-Point Story Arc” – a fool-proof, fail-safe and time-honoured way to structure a story.
(Even if you’re a short story writer or flash fiction writer rather than a novelist, this structure still applies, so don’t be put off by the title of Watts’ book.) The eight points which Watts lists are, in order: StasisTriggerThe questSurpriseCritical choiceClimaxReversalResolution He explains that every classic plot passes through these stages and that he doesn’t tend to use them to plan a story, but instead uses the points during the writing process: So, what do the eight points mean? Stasis Trigger The quest Surprise Climax Reversal. 100 Little Ways You Can Dramatically Improve Your Writing. Moment Distribution Method Example 1 (1/2) - Structural Analysis. 200 Word Descriptive Hair List. 50 Portrait Retouching Tutorials To Take Your Photoshop Skills To A New Level.
Email Is it something that often happens to you? You just sit and keep on looking through your photos on the computer screen trying to take a closer look at your full-size pictures. And then it occurs to you that they didn’t really suck that much during the actual shoot? Of course, what you see during the shoot with your eyes and what you get after the photo session is not the same thing. But do not let your despair take possession of you! Photoshop will save the world with its advanced tools to smooth out skin and hair, optimize body proportions and emphasize some details. Just like beauty! Photoshop is capable of making slightly imperfect photo into an awesome shot. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. . \24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50.
How to Break the Rules of Writing (& More) According to Bestselling YA author Ransom Riggs. Like most first conversations and bad first drafts, my (WD’s Managing Editor Adrienne Crezo) interview with Ransom Riggs begins with a discussion about the weather. And not just any weather, either, but peculiar versions of standard precipitation: dust storms, cloudbursts, thundersnow and tornadoes.
Of course, Riggs is experiencing none of those phenomena as he sits in the warmth of the never-ending summer of Los Angeles. “I hate to tell you what it’s like here right now,” he says. “No, I don’t. It’s gorgeous. Just perfect.” That kind of easygoing humor is familiar to Riggs’ fans. Whatever dreams Riggs may have had about his future, he couldn’t have predicted the wild success of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, a tale of time travel and magic set against the eerie backdrop of unnerving black-and-white photos of levitating girls and creepy twin clowns.
Luckily, Riggs decided to take the editor’s advice. [Writing a Hero's Adventure story? It’s still partly just a hobby. Yes. Horror Authors: How to Scare the Heck Out of Your Readers. Al's Writing Block: Writing: How to Describe a Room. I've noticed lately in the stats that people have been actively searching for "how to describe a room.
" Even though I had done a writing prompt that called for using the description of a room, I never did go over the particulars of describing locations. So for anybody looking for some specific answers, here are my thoughts on describing interior settings, for fiction and prose. First and foremost, you got to ask yourself, what importance is the room or setting to the story or characters? If the room is only there for a brief passing scene, it may just suffice to say "so-and-so went into the broom closet. It was dark, cramped, and loaded with brooms. " That may be all you need. For more significant settings, where you really do want to paint the picture in the readers' heads and firmly establish a sense of space or ambiance, then of course you'll want to dig into more details.
The objects in a room - furniture and stuff - may or may not factor into your scene. In summary... Do: Novel Writing Help. 25 Things You Should Know About Character. Previous iterations of the “25 Things” series: 25 Things Every Writer Should Know 25 Things You Should Know About Storytelling And now… Here you’ll find the many things I believe — at this moment! — about characters: 1. Without character, you have nothing. 2. A great character can be the line between narrative life and story death. 3. Don’t believe that all those other aspects are separate from the character. 4. The audience will do anything to spend time with a great character. 5. It is critical to know what a character wants from the start. 6. It doesn’t matter if we “like” your character, or in the parlance of junior high whether we even “like-like” your character. 7.
It is critical to smack the audience in the crotchal region with an undeniable reason to give a fuck. 8. You must prove this thesis: “This character is worth the audience’s time.” 9. Don’t let the character be a dingleberry stuck to the ass of a toad as he floats downriver on a bumpy log. 10. 11. 12. 13. The law of threes. 5 Tips on How to Write From the Opposite Gender | Miss Literati.
Elements of Suspense in Writing: 6 Secret to Creating and Sustaining Suspense. Thriller writing? Mystery writing? Literary fiction? It’s all the same: Building apprehension in the minds of your readers is one of the most effective keys to engaging them early in your novel and keeping them flipping pages late into the night. Simply put, if you don’t hook your readers, they won’t get into the story. If you don’t drive the story forward by making readers worry about your main character, they won’t have a reason to keep reading. Think: Worry equals suspense. The best part is, the secrets for ratcheting up the suspense are easy to implement. 1. Four factors are necessary for suspense—reader empathy, reader concern, impending danger and escalating tension. We create reader empathy by giving the character a desire, wound or internal struggle that readers can identify with.
We want readers to worry about whether or not the character will get what he wants. Suspense builds as danger approaches. Then blow in more. And more. Until the reader can hardly stand it. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Periodic Table of Storytelling. Short Stories: 10 Tips for Creative Writers. Active Voice Versus Passive Voice. Today's topic is active voice versus passive voice. Here's a question from Brian in Iowa. He writes, “It drives me crazy when people write in passive voice. How can I teach people how to tell the difference between passive and active voice and to stay away from passive voice?” Well, Brian is right, the first step is to help people understand the difference between active and passive voice, because many people believe they should avoid the passive voice, but fewer people can define it or recognize it.
What Is Active Voice? I'll start with active voice because it's simpler. Another example is the title of the Marvin Gaye song “I Heard It through the Grapevine.” What Is Passive Voice? In passive voice, the target of the action gets promoted to the subject position. If you wanted to make the title of the Marvin Gaye song passive, you would say “It was heard by me through the grapevine,” not such a catchy title anymore. Next: Is "To Be" a Sign of Passive Voice?
Is Passive Voice Always Wrong? 1. Short Story Shortcuts: 4 Techniques For Making A Big Impact In Few Words. To successfully write short fiction, you need to make a big impact in as few words as possible. So every choice you make as an author needs to be deliberate, every character needs to act with purpose, and every word needs to pack a punch. When less is definitely more, focusing on certain details can help imbue your short story with lots of color, meaning, and subtext—without superfluous words.
Four Small Ways To Pack Big Meaning Into Short Stories 1. Character Gestures – When you’re writing with a word count restriction, you want to show your characters’ personalities without using too much dialogue. 2. 3. 4. How Can You Implement These Techniques In Your Writing? To understand how well these techniques work, read some short fiction! As an exercise, give yourself a short word limit and try to tell your story. Check out these articles for more about keeping short stories short: 5 Ways To Shorten Your Short Stories 5 Surprising Short Story Mistakes.
Mythology. Setting: Using Scene To Enrich Your Writing. In both fiction and nonfiction, the setting is the general background against which your story takes place—the physical location and time period, both of which influence your characters and plot. So how can a creative writer use setting and scenery to further offset, augment, or reflect the action of the plot? Although we’re going to be exploring this issue in terms of fiction, these techniques work for nonfiction as well.
These craft techniques work in all genres: poetry, stories, personal essays, memoir, and books. Suppose you’re writing a novel that is set in the Deep South in 1955 and your protagonist is an immigrant facing prejudice and roadblocks at every turn. You’d have a completely different novel if your protagonist were a Texas cowboy who found himself in Mississippi at that particular time and place.
Setting the stage for a short story or novel is a crucial part of engaging your reader. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. QUESTION: What was the setting of the last thing you wrote? Read On...An Excerpt from Six Tips for Writing Young Adult Novels by Nora Raleigh Baskin at Gotham Writers' Workshops and WritingClasses.com. By Nora Raleigh Baskin I didn’t start out writing for children.
Like many of my fellow young adult/middle-grade authors, I spent quite a few years (five) writing adult fiction before getting published. Then a well-intentioned woman in a writing course made the unwelcome suggestion that I consider writing for children. Hey, just because I wrote about children didn’t mean I was relegated to writing for children. But after a good cry, I went home and gave it a try. I soon began getting my first handwritten, personal—and helpful—rejections. Here are six lessons I learned about writing for young adults: POVGet the POV right. AgeMake sure your character’s age suits your audience. Voice/LanguageFigure out the voice, and the language will follow. Touchy SubjectsDon’t shy away from touchy subjects. PreachinessDon’t get preachy. Hopeful EndingsWrite hopeful endings. This article first appeared in The Writer magazine. The 8 Habits of Highly Successful Young-Adult Fiction Authors - Nolan Feeney. Young-adult fiction, commonly called "YA fiction," has exploded over the past decade or so: The number of YA titles published grew more than 120 percent between 2002 and 2012, and other estimates say that between 1997 and 2009, that figure was closer to 900 percent.
Ask a handful of young-adult fiction writers what exactly makes a YA novel, though, and you’ll get a handful of conflicting answers. At their core, YA books are for and about teenagers and pre-teens, usually between 12 and 18 years old, but sometimes as young as 10. Yet more than half of all YA novels sold are bought by older adults 18 or older, and certain titles published in the U.S. as YA are considered mainstream fiction for adults in other countries. Some authors believe the intent to write for young readers is a prerequisite of YA fiction; others don’t even realize their books will be labeled as YA until after they finish writing.
Many successful authors say there’s no secret to writing for teenagers. Search Engines for Serious Writers. June 20th, 2010 Finding the information you need as a writer shouldn’t be a chore. Luckily, there are plenty of search engines out there that are designed to help you at any stage of the process, from coming up with great ideas to finding a publisher to get your work into print. Both writers still in college and those on their way to professional success will appreciate this list of useful search applications that are great from making writing a little easier and more efficient. Professional Find other writers, publishers and ways to market your work through these searchable databases and search engines. Writing These helpful tools will help you along in the writing process. Research Try out these tools to get your writing research done in a snap.
Google Scholar: With this specialized search engine from Google, you’ll only get reliable, academic results for your searches.WorldCat: If you need a book from the library, try out this tool. Reference Need to look up a quote or a fact? Niche Writers. Unicorn Of Scotland - A National Scottish Symbol. What says 'magic' more loudly than choosing the mystical and powerful Unicorn of Scotland as the country's National Animal?
A country's 'National Animal' should represent the best, and defining, qualities of the nation who chose it. Scots have a strong sentimental streak under that practical and reserved exterior, and Scottish culture is rich in superstitions, myths and legends. So, choosing a heraldic symbol as awe-inspiring as the unicorn makes perfect sense! Chances are you don't know too much about this fantastic creature, so let's start there. (But if you want to jump straight to how, when & why it was chosen CLICK HERE) Unicorns Abound In History & Legend The stories and legends surrounding the Unicorn go about as far back in history as the human race. These beautiful creatures were worshiped by the ancient Babylonians, and written descriptions of them appear throughout ancient history, and as early as the first century AD.
Click on image to buy or browse Unicorn qualities included: CS13002 Programming and Data Structures. We have already discussed how one can define and initialize arrays and access individual cells of an array. In this chapter we introduce some advanced techniques related to handling of arrays. Passing arrays to functions We have seen how individual values (variables and pointers) can be passed to functions.
Now let us see how we can pass an entire array to a function. Suppose an array is defined as: #define MAXSIZE 100 int myarr[MAXSIZE]; In order to pass the array myarr to a function foonction one may define the function as: int foonction ( int A[MAXSIZE] , int size ) { ... } This function takes two arguments, the first is an array of size MAXSIZE, and the second an integer argument named size. Here this second argument is meant for passing the actual size of the array. Figure: Two-dimensional arrays We will discuss more about two-dimensional arrays in the chapter on dynamic memory allocation.
Academic Writing. Search Engines. The Internet Writing Workshop: Write - Critique - Learn. How to write a novel* Ever wanted to write a novel but had no clue how? Having just finished my fifth novel, I am now ready to pass on my accummulated novel-writing wisdom to those what have never writ one but wants to. Here is the complete, full and unexpurgated guide: First of all you need a computer. (Yeah, yeah, I know in the olden days they made do with quill, ink and paper, and typewriters—aargh! Don’t get me started on how creepy and scary typewriters are—plus, whatever, this is not the olden days.)
On that computer you need a word processing program. If you want to write your novel relatively quickly and productively, it should have no access to the interweb thingy, also no games, or anything other than the two aforementioned programs. Do not spend a lot of time on this. Sometimes working titles wind up being the actual title (Snakes on a Plane, anyone? Make sure you make it a bigger and fancier font than your novel proper, underline it, too. Do you just start the novel or do you outline? To sum up: 25 Things Every Writer Should Know. 100 Little Ways You Can Dramatically Improve Your Writing.