In last month's blog, I covered some aspects of sequences for writers, and in particular Darrin and Travis Donelly's '10-day Screenplay'. This month I want to look again at sequences from a slightly different perspective by looking at the use of 'tension'. In Paul Joseph Gulino's book, 'Screenwriting the sequence approach - The hidden structure …
Tag: Story structure
Another look at sequences for writers
Recently I was going through my kindle library and I came across the "10-Day Screenplay" by Darrin Donnelly and Travis Donelly. It's been a long time since I read it, and so I started to flick through the pages. I know the first time I read it, I thought it presented nothing new on the …
How many story lines in a novel?
A story is about a character or characters who desperately wants something and pursues a goal through a series of actions and outcomes that escalate to the climax of the story, and the eventual resolution of the story. In simple terms -- this chain of cause and effect events is the 'plot' of a story. …
My Seven writing rules
First of all, I want to make it clear there are no rules for writing or story-telling. These are simply my rules, or perhaps more accurately 'preferences', that I have adopted for my own purposes. They worked for me and helped me publish four novels. If you're starting to write for the first time, maybe …
5 Story Questions to consider
The process of developing a story from a basic idea is not easy. When I first started writing fiction, I thought it was just a matter of discovering the plot events in the story - an outline. But it's more complex than that. Before starting a writing project you need to understand the story dynamics …
Learning storytelling from the movies
I'm a big fan of movies -- sci-fi, action-adventure, fantasy, rom-com, comedy -- even the kids movies and series like Ice Age, and Toy Story. I have a decent sized blue-ray and DVD library and it's fun to watch those great movies over and over again. But besides the entertainment value of movies, if you …
Story by Numbers
Recently I bought Story by Numbers by Adam Skelter. I had watched a number of YouTube presentations on the "The Art of Story Channel" and was impressed with the quality of the presentations and movie analysis, and wanted to delve further into his approach to story development. First, a warning. Skelter uses some colourful language …
Plausibility – the biggest plot hole of all.
As a science fiction and fantasy writer it might seem odd for me to pick up on the idea that storylines should be plausible. After all, in the world of science fiction we have time travel, aliens, dystopian future worlds, mind control and many other implausible features in our writings. But we persuade our readers …
Continue reading Plausibility – the biggest plot hole of all.
The Heroine’s journey
Recently, I came across a book about "The Heroine's Journey" by Gail Carriger. It piqued my curiosity since I had done a lot of research the Hero's Journey and I wondered how the Heroine's journey could be different. Joseph Campbell was first to use the phrase, and his ideas where developed and expanded by Chistopher …
The protagonist’s world view
This month I want to look at some of the ideas in Lisa Cron's book, Story Genius. In one of the quotes from the book, she says: At its most basic, a story is about how someone grapples with a problem they can't avoid, and how they change in the process... Maybe that's a little …
JMJ Williamson 