In last month's blog, I looked at Scrivener, the primary tool I use for writing and publishing. This month I want to look at another tool, which is relatively new-- Plottr. Plottr, is essentially a time line planning tool. It allows you to quickly map out a story's timeline with scene cards. It also allows …
Tag: story
Daydeam Believer
Not many people are old enough to remember Daydream Believer. It was a single released by the Monkees in 1968 with lead singer Davy Jones and headed the US charts for four weeks. It's a catchy tune, with cryptic lyrics about a daydream believer and his homecoming queen. But I can still remember the chorus. …
Save the cat writes a novel
One of the first books I read on screenwriting was the late Blake Synder's Save the Cat. I liked it so much I also bought and read Save the Cat! Goes to the Movies and Save the Cat Strikes Back, both of which are great books on story and genre structure. I therefore wondered what more I …
Reading as a writer reads
I sometimes wonder why we get so excited about holidays. For me holidays are not about lying in the sun or sun tans. It's about reconnecting with family, getting away from the pressures of current day life, dining out, some healthy walking and ... catching up on my reading. So on my recent holiday to …
Story Drivers
Last month I published my third novel, AndroDigm Park 2067. Much of my time since has been taken up with marketing with little time left for writing. But now it's time to start thinking again about the next novel. I have two very different ideas I am currently exploring and it's difficult to choose which. …
AndroDigm Park 2067 – published!
It's a great feeling to publish a new novel -- somewhere between nirvana and just plain relief that it's finally out. AndroDigm Park 2067 is a project I started over two years ago. The title changed from that original title several times, but the story remains the same. So let me explain the strange title. …
The importance of the B Story
Recently I was going through some of my old books on screenwriting and story telling and I picked up the 'Save the Cat Goes to the Movies' by the late Blake Snyder. I found the book inspiring the first time I read it some years ago, and as I started to read it again I found …
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 …
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 …
Theme – the magic ingredient within a story
In my last blog, I tried to define story as: “ …a tale about a character or characters, set in a particular environment or time, who struggle to deal with an important problem or opportunity that comes into their live(s) and which sets in motion a sequence of events and actions that logically lead to …
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JMJ Williamson 