Mar. 31st, 2015

[identity profile] mbarker.livejournal.com
Writing Excuses 10.13: Where Is My Story Going?

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2015/03/29/writing-excuses-10-13-where-is-my-story-going-2/

Key points: Think about a sense of progress. Don't let the middle be terrible. Here is where you are beginning to fulfill the promises you made to the reader in the beginning, and building trust that you are going to answer the questions. Knowing the shape and promises, you can start doling out information. Think of mysteries -- clues, and reveals! Look for the inherent conflicts. Look for underlying structure and pacing. Romances and buddy cop movies, underdog sports story and war movies. Avoid clichés or formulaic writing by understanding what's really needed, and how the pieces interact. Don't cut the end off the roast, get a bigger pan. Know what your ending is, so that you can build towards it from the beginning. Look for moments of awesome, a.k.a. set pieces or showpieces, and make sure you aim and set them up correctly. Also, think about your stand-up-and-cheer moment, the climax. Set up your moments of awesome, your set pieces, and your stand-up-and-cheer moment so they mean something to the character, progress the plot, and have a huge emotional impact on the reader.
Moments of awesome, and a stand-up-and-cheer moment, too! )
[Brandon] Excellent. This... I think this has been very helpful. I hope that you listeners are getting a better idea for how to shape your stories and make those promises, and then really drive them to these moments. Dan, you're going to give us a writing prompt.
[Dan] A writing exercise. If you were here two weeks ago, we asked you to look at a plot of a story that you like or a movie or a TV show, whatever it is, and then reverse-engineer it and figure out what the outline is and what promises are being made in the first section of it. What you do now, and if you didn't do last week, go ahead and just make something up now. Pick a TV show and figure out the A and B plot, whatever you need to do. What you do now, for the new exercise, is you're going to take that and flip it. You're going to emphasize one of the side plots as the main plot and see how that changes the story. Look at what different promises that requires. Look at how that will affect the ending. So alter your outline you built last week, or two weeks ago, by emphasizing a different thread and seeing how that changes [garbled]
[Mary] Be aware that it may change to the main character is.
[Dan] Almost certainly.
[Howard] I think that's the thing to recognize in this. The thing that you start by doing is saying, "This is now the core story piece," the piece that was a side piece before. What else do I have to move? How do I need to move them? What do I do to deemphasize them? This is huge fun, which is why we're making you do it.
[Brandon] The entire story of The Empire Strikes Back is about how do we get C-3 PO put back together.
[Laughter]
[Brandon] If everything centers on that. This is what were looking at doing. How do you build a story where we need to get C-3 PO back together?
[Dan] How do you make that meaningful?
[Brandon] Yes. Exactly. All right. This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now go write.

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