Novel Forms

Monday, February 27, 2006

Novels currently take one of three main forms:Narrative: a story told by a narrator, or storyteller. Stream of Consciousness: immersion in the ruminations of a character's wandering mind. An example of a stream-of-consciousness novel is Franz Kafka's The Trial. Documentary: somebody's story told indirectly through documentation. Document novels tell the story through letters, a journal, a diary,

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What Its Premise Does for Your Story

Friday, February 24, 2006

The story questions a novel poses make readers follow the plot of a story like bloodhounds follow a scent. They want the answers to those questions, and they get impatient with distractions. Consequently, they quickly lose interest in anything that doesn't contribute to proving the story's premise.Your premise, then, is a tool to keep you in control of the story and your reader engaged.What a

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Creating Conflict in Character and Desire

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

To create conflict, you need three things: a main character, a goal for her or him, and opposition.In carving out the characters of your protagonist and antagonist, connect each one's deepest desire to his fundamental difference from the other.Shakespeare gives us an elegant example of this in Hamlet and his foil, Laertes. Hamlet is a man of honor — bona fide honor. Laertes is a man of seeming —

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It's All About the Reader

Friday, February 17, 2006

Publishing is a trade, and writing is a commercial product. It's a business. A service industry. People buy fiction to get an enjoyable experience in fantasy. Not to be guided, edified, informed, educated, changed, shamed, preached at, or persuaded of anything. Many writers fail because they view writing as a way to get attention. They have a burning desire to express themselves and think

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Teases 3

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

The afficiandos of literary fiction often look down their noses at the tease opening, preferring the classical opening that presents story questions about the core conflict. But don't let their PC tastes rule you. Here's a example of a fabulous tease opening by the Master himself. How about a play that opens this way . . .At midnight a sentinel slowly paces before his castle post, looking all

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The M.I.C.E. Quotient of a Story

Friday, February 10, 2006

All four elements of a story (milieu, idea, character, and events) are in all stories. They aren't all equally important in all stories, however. Depending on what the story is about, the relative amounts of each element should vary. That is, a story contains four types of information: information about the milieu, about the idea, about the characters, and about events.To the extent that a story

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The Lit Fuse Device in Melodrama and Comedy

Monday, February 6, 2006

The Lit Fuse device is common in melodrama and comedy.The very old "Perils of Pauline" movies are a melodramatic example. The villain, Snidely Whiplash, demands, "You must marry me!""No! No! I won't marry you!" she cries."But you must marry me!""No! No! I won't marry you!""But you must marry me!""No! No! I won't marry you!"If he can't have her, nobody can. So Snidely ties her to the railroad

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The Lit Fuse

Thursday, February 2, 2006

"Lighting the fuse" is a powerful literary device for creating negative Type 2 Suspense — putting the reader in a state of anxiety or apprehension.The classic example is that a time-bomb is about to go off and the hero must defuse it in time. But you can light the fuse by putting a sympathetic character in any situation with something terrible about to happen (usually at an appointed time) that

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Use Strong Verbs

Wednesday, February 1, 2006

Weak verbs are actionless verbs, vague verbs, and verbs in the passive voice. We have already discussed the passive voice, so let's focus on actionless verbs and vague verbs.Actionless verbs include static verbs, like exist and the various forms of the verb to be. Other actionless verbs include English's infamous cargo of "helping" or "auxiliary" verbs. (See below.) I call them "little verbs."

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