For a long time I have wondered what distinguishes a great story-teller from the rest. Clearly, great story tellers are blessed with great creative skills and imagination. Many of the basic techniques of writing such as structuring, using dialogue, grammar, point of view, and voice, can be learnt. The creative skills of story telling are …
Category: For newbie authors
Story Structure – The Big Moments of Act Three
This is the third blog dealing with story structure and focuses on Act Three. Act One deals with the story set-up. It introduces the characters, the story world and the central problem that will become the focus of the story. Act Two deals with the central conflict of the story as the hero or heroine …
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Story Structure – the Big Moments of Act Two
This is the second instalment on the subject of story structure, and covers the difficult Second Act. Finding the content for Act One is relatively easy. There's exposition that needs to go in: introduce the hero and the other main characters, setup the story world, and then blow it all apart with a big problem. …
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Story structure — the big moments of Act One
Story telling, whether you are a novelist or screenwriter, requires an understanding of story dynamics and structure. For some writers, this is ingrained into their DNA: they don't need fancy ideas and concepts for something that comes natural to them. All they need is a story, which starts with a problem that comes into a …
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The Sequence Method
There is a lot a novelist can learn about storytelling from the movie industry. Stories in novels and movies differ only by the nature of the medium through which they are presented. The same story dynamics apply to both mediums. In my previous two blogs I looked at two different variations of the Three-Act Structure …
Mythic Metaphors
Recently, I finished the first draft of my third book. It takes time to distance yourself from a manuscript before you can objectively edit it, so I picked up a project that had been working on for some time. The idea behind the project is to create a high-level story blueprint to see if a …
The Three-Act Structure
Novelists can learn a lot from scriptwriters who have developed a number of tools for story development. One such tool is the three-act structure. Screenwriters often use "Acts" - a concept more familiar to staged drama - to breakdown the structure of their movies into major parts. Of course there are no curtain calls in …
Endings
Dan Wells is famous for his seven point system for structuring stories. The approach is set out in a series of five videos that are still available on you-tube. Just search for 'Dan Wells'. The Well's system is not vastly different from a number of other systems based around a three-act structure, with major plot …
Fixing your Story
Everyone knows first drafts of a novel are always c**p. But how do you fix them? Unless you're Stephen King, the first draft will require more than just a little line editing and proof reading before it can be published. So before you polish a draft you need to ensure that the story is working …
Writing Apps for the iPad Pro
Recently my son convinced me to get a new iPadPro. I went for the large 12-inch version and bought a Logitech cover/keyboard, which means I can use it as a substitute laptop if I want to. The graphics are amazing. The question then arose as to which writing Apps I should buy to help me …
JMJ Williamson 