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Category Archives: Storytelling
All My Best Articles on Storytelling on One Web Page!
From Melanie Anne Phillips Gathered all my best articles on storytelling techniques onto one web page You’re welcome. Melanie Need personalized story development help? Click below to learn about my story consulting service:
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Designing Your Plot with Multi Appreciation Moments
The great masters of plot create dramatic moments that multi-task. For example, a novice writer might reveal the story’s goal in a line of dialog, but a master storyteller might reveal it in such a way as to also add … Continue reading
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Storytelling Tip 7 of 50 – Out of Sequence Experiences
Trick 7 Out of Sequence Experiences (Changing Temporal Relationships) With this technique, the audience is unaware they are being presented things out of order. Such a story is the motion picture, Betrayal, with Ben Kingsley. The story opens and plays through the … Continue reading
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Storytelling Trick #3 of 50 – “Meaning Reversals”
Trick 3 Meaning Reversals (Shifting Context to Change Meaning) Reversals change context. In other words, part of the meaning of anything we consider is due to its environment. The phrase, guilt by association, expresses this notion. In storytelling, we can play upon audience … Continue reading
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Storytelling Trick #2 of 50
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 … Continue reading
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Storytelling Trick #1 of 50
Trick #1: Building Size (Changing Scope) This first technique holds audience interest by slowly revealing the true size of something over the course of the story until it can finally be seen to be either larger or smaller than it originally … Continue reading
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The Difference Between Story Structure and Storytelling
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50 Sure-Fire Storytelling Tricks! – Free Online Book
My book, 50 Sure-Fire Storytelling Tricks!, is now available free on the Storymind.com web site, as well as in paperback and for Kindle. Click the picture to read it online for free!
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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
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Writing with Red Herrings
Excerpted from: 50 Sure-Fire Storytelling Tricks! By Melanie Anne Phillips Available in Paperback and for Kindle The old expression, “A Red Herring,” means something that is intentionally misleading. In screenplays, a red herring is a scene, which is set up … Continue reading
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