After the Christmas break, it's been difficult for me to get back into a writing routine again. Not that I ever switch off completely from the writing process -- I'm always thinking about my current novel and where the story is heading. And that's just as important as time spent at the keyboard. But one the …
Tag: story development
Conflict, Tension and Audience Participation
Novel writers can learn a lot about story development from the screenwriting industry. In my previous blog, I dealt with how screenwriters use Story, Plot, Arc and Theme to develop a story. This month I want to look at how screenwriters use Conflict, Tension and Audience Participation to grip an audience. The essential elements of …
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Story, Plot, Arc and Theme — how they work together
Any new writer might well be confused by some of the terms used in writing such as story, plot, arc and theme. Aren't they interchangeable terms? It's easy to see why the terms might be confused. The first person to distinguish story from plot was E. M. Forster in Aspects of the Novel (1927). Forster wrote …
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The writing process
It is almost eight years since I started writing novels, and I've learned an awful lot in that time. It hasn't been easy. I had a story I wanted to write and I wanted to start writing it as soon as possible. But I soon found out that you need to make some key decisions before …
JMJ Williamson 