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Category Archives: Practical Tips
Have Your Characters Write Their Own Life Stories
For your characters to be compelling, your readers will need to think of them as real people, not just dramatic functionaries or collections of traits. To help make this happen, have each of your characters write a short one-page autobiographical … Continue reading
Posted in Building Characters, Creative Writing, Novel Writing, Practical Tips
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Drop Exposition through Arguments
Here’s a short one… A person talking is often boring. People arguing are often compelling. If you have to drop exposition, try to do it in the back and forth barbs of an argument. Let the characters use the information … Continue reading
Posted in Novel Writing, Quick Tips, Screenwriting, Storytelling, Storytelling Tips, Writing Tip of the Day
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Using Index Cards for Your Story
Excerpted from: 50 Sure-Fire Storytelling Tricks! By Melanie Anne Phillips Available in Paperback and for Kindle Index cards (3×5 or 5×7 in size) are often used by screenwriters to plan out the sequence of events in their stories. Usually, a script … Continue reading
Posted in Creative Writing, Novel Writing, Practical Tips, Screenwriting, Writing Tip of the Day
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Writing Tip: Keep a Creative Log
One of the biggest differences between a pedestrian novel and a riveting one are the clever little quips, concepts, snippets of dialog, and fresh metaphors. But coming up with this material on the fly is a difficult chore, and sometimes … Continue reading
Posted in Creative Writing, Novel Writing, Practical Tips, Writing Tip of the Day
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Give each character a personal goal
Personal Goals are the motivating reasons your characters care about and/or participate in the effort to achieve or prevent the overall goal. In other words, they see the main story goal as a means to an end, not as an … Continue reading
Posted in Character Motivations, Novel Writing, Quick Tips, Screenwriting, Storytelling Tips, Storyweaving Tips, Writing Tip of the Day
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How to Reveal Your Goal
While the structural nature of a story’s goal is crucial to developing a plot that makes sense, the storytelling manner in which the goal is revealed can determine whether a plot seems clever or pedestrian. In this tip, we’ll explore … Continue reading
Posted in Novel Writing, Plot, Practical Tips, Writing Tip of the Day
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Storytelling Trick 2 – Red Herrings (Changing Importance)
Red herrings are designed to make something appear more or less important than it really is. Several good examples of this technique can be found in the motion picture The Fugitive. In one scene a police car flashes its lights and … Continue reading
Posted in Author & Audience, Creative Writing, Novel Writing, Practical Tips, Screenwriting, Storytelling
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Writing from a Character’s Point of View
Perhaps the best way to instill real feelings in a character is to stand in his or her shoes and write from the character’s point of view. Unfortunately, this method also holds the greatest danger of undermining the meaning of … Continue reading
Posted in Characters, Creative Writing, Practical Tips
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Love Interests and the Dramatic Triangle
A lot of books about writing describe the importance of a “Love Interest.” Other books see a Love Interest as unnecessary and cliché. What does Dramatica Say? As with most dramatic concepts, Dramatica pulls away the storytelling to take a … Continue reading
Posted in Characters, Plot, Practical Tips, Story Development
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Writing Characters of the Opposite Sex
Perhaps the most fundamental error made by authors, whether novice or experienced, is that all their characters, male and female, tend to reflect the gender of the author. This is hardly surprising, since recent research finally proves that men and … Continue reading
Posted in Practical Tips, Story Psychology
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