Story Questions

Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Suspense is uncertainty, a state of being undecided or undetermined. So, at bottom, suspense is a question.For example, a person on trial hears the verdict — guilty. Sentencing will be in three days. For the next three days the convicted criminal is left in suspense about what her sentence will be. In other words, the story raises the question What will her sentence be?Therefore, to create

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The Role of Decisions in Conflict

Sunday, November 27, 2005

As I tell tennis players, the best way to pressure people is to confront them with choices. That's because they fear making the "wrong" one.If a person's fear of making decisions is greater than his desire, that fear extinguishes desire.Have you ever known a person who cannot make a decision? I knew a woman once who couldn't even decide how she wanted her coffee. I kid you not: before ordering it

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Milieu Stories

Friday, November 25, 2005

In some stories the milieu is sketchy, while in others it is presented in great detail. A milieu story is a story about its milieu.Examples of milieu stories are: Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan SwiftTwenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas by Jules Verne Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through a Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark TwainThe Time

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Engage your reader -- Part 2.

Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Step 2 in the process of engaging your reader is to organize your writing to meet your reader's needs.People read to get answers. Anticipate the questions your readers bring to the work, and organize your material to respond to those questions. Also think through the questions your readers are likely to ask while reading, and further organize your material to answer each question immediately.When

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Engage your reader.

Monday, November 21, 2005

Reading your words is spending time with you. So, make the persona you project engaging.To engage your readers: Speak to them directly and clearly.Organize your message in a structure that reflects their interests.Use an appropriate tone.And, before you even begin writing, identify your audience. You must grab and hold your readers' attention if you want to get your ideas across. They aren't

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But aren't character-driven stories the best?

Friday, November 18, 2005

Tell me who's fit to be the judge of that, and I'll go ask her or him.The literati describe fiction as either character-driven or plot-driven. They lump Milieu Stories, Idea Stories, and Events Stories into the plot-driven category. They regard plot-driven fiction as inferior, lowbrow, preferred by the uncultivated masses and therefore "transient" because it isn't worthy of a hard cover.The only

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The Importance of the MICE Quotient

Wednesday, November 16, 2005

To demonstrate something about the MICE Quotient, I'm going to use an an example of a story's opening. Here it is...I had been invalided home from the Front; and, after spending some months in a rather depressing Convalescent Home, was given a month's sick leave. Having no near relations or friends, I was trying to make up my mind what to do, when I ran across John Cavendish. I had seen very

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The Elements of a Story

Monday, November 14, 2005

Stories are comprised of four elements. If one predominates, it shapes the story.The elements that comprise a story are: milieuideacharactereventsA story's milieu is its world, the environment of its characters. It encompasses both the material and moral spheres of action. That is, it encompasses both the inner and outer landscapes/spaces surrounding the characters, as well as the surrounding

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Put statements in positive form.

Saturday, November 12, 2005

In his Elements of Style, William Strunk wrote,Make definite assertions. Avoid tame, colorless, hesitating, noncommittal language. Use the word not as a means of denial or in antithesis, never as a means of evasion.Here are examples to show the difference ...John was not very often on time. >>> John usually came late.Lisa did not think that was a very nice thing to say. >>> Lisa thought that a

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Readability

Friday, November 11, 2005

Writings' readability is its ease of understanding. Under-standing is mental weight lifting and requires effort. As tested, understanding therefore requires two things: the ability to understand and the effort to understand. So, readability is a function of both complexity and the average reader's willingness to make the required effort to understand.Readable writing is considerate of the reader,

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The President's English

Thursday, November 10, 2005

On a forum of technical writers a Brit once corrected me, as though Americans are ignorant and making grammatical errors by using American English, which he arrogantly viewed as somehow "incorrect."Thinking he would surely have to hear himself if I dropped a subtle hint that 400,000,000 people throughout North America say different than instead of different from, it made no dent in his obtuseness

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Omit needless words - Part 2

I could give you a mile-long list of wordy phrases to avoid, but that wouldn't be as helpful as giving you some important patterns to watch out for. The left side of the list below shows examples of the main patterns of phrasing that result in wordiness. The right side shows potential alternatives.the question as to whether >>> whether or the question whetherthere is no doubt but that >>> no

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Omit needless words.

Wednesday, November 9, 2005

I could have stated this advice as Omit unnecessary words, but that may not say to you exactly what I mean. I could have said Omit superfluous words, but superfluous is a big word and just vague enough to be interpreted as "Leave out any word you can." So I chose to state this guideline exactly as Professor William Strunk Jr. did nearly a century ago in The Elements of Style: Omit needless

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Core Conflict & Scenic Conflict

Tuesday, November 8, 2005

Look at the diagram below. It represents a story in five scenes, showing:the relationship between the (overall) core conflict and the (particular) conflict in each scenethe relationship between a character's (overall) main goal and his (particular) purpose (a mini-goal, an immediate goal) in each scene. In the begining your hero, confronted with the core conflict, sets a (main) goal to overcome

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The Importance of Conflict

Monday, November 7, 2005

Perhaps James M. Frey puts it best when, in How to Write a Damn Good Novel, he says that story is struggle, and conflict is the "gunpowder" of storytelling. Conflict not only moves the plot, it brings characters to life. For, in the light of conflict, character is defined. That's because the way people respond to obstacles, resistance, barriers, and conflict sharply characterizes them, telling us

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Subgenres

Sunday, November 6, 2005

A genre is often broken down into subgenres. For example, there are more than a hundred subgenres of romance.Genre fiction defies any classification scheme you try to impose on it though. That's because classifying novels is like classifying living things: since they evolve, they don't fit neatly into artificial categories superimposed on their evolutionary tree. Therefore, just as you find

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Genre Fiction

Saturday, November 5, 2005

Some examples of genres aremysterysuspense (thrillers)horrorscience fictionromancefantasywesternYou can see from this list that milieu stories, idea stories, and events stories fall into the category of genre fiction. Since they aren't about a character, they aren't character driven.These novels are conventional. Readers have many specific expectations of them. So many that, to fulfill the

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Nonsexist Language: The Pronoun Problem - Part 2

Wednesday, November 2, 2005

As I mentioned at the end of Part 1, he (a subject pronoun) is easier to avoid than him (an object pronoun), and both are easier to avoid than his (a possessive pronoun).To avoid him, your options are:Switch to the plural.Substitute a noun for "him."Reword the sentence to eliminate the need for "him."Substitute "him or her" for "him."Here are examples of all but the last method.Eliminating the

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