[From KMW: Since I am traveling this week, I’m offering up a shorter post today about how to write better action scenes. For my birthday, I gave myself a month-long “writing retreat” in the mountains! I’ll be posting regular content again next week, and you can check Instagram for some peeks into my adventures.] As […]
August 5, 2016 by 69 Comments Structuring Your NovelHow to Get the Most Out of Your Sequel Scenes
Part 8 of The Do’s and Don’ts of Storytelling According to Marvel Sometimes just the mention of “sequel scenes” makes writers cross their eyes. Isn’t a sequel, you know, a followup to your first book? What does it have to do with individual scenes? The answers to these questions are important, because the sequel makes up […]
May 17, 2015 by 67 Comments Structuring Your NovelHow the Perfect Midpoint Moves Your Protagonist From Reaction to Action
I have to thank the Marvel movies for a lot of things–like my Captain America shield pillow, my Iron Man socks, my Spider-Man poster, my Hulk thumb-wrestler. Ahem. Where was I? Oh, yes, talking about being a writer, not a fan-girl. One other, slightly more important thing for which I have to thank the Marvel movies […]
October 29, 2014 by 42 Comments Structuring Your NovelWhy You Might Be Ruining Your Story’s Best Scenes
This week’s video talks about why appropriate repercussions will always be the earmark of your story’s best scenes. Video Transcript: Stories are about stuff that happens. But even more, they’re about stuff that happens because other stuff happened. In short, they’re about repercussions. Every event in your story needs to create character reactions that are […]
October 17, 2014 by 40 Comments Narrative5 Keys to Writing Epic Battle Scenes
If epic battle scenes make such exciting climaxes, then a whole book full of them would be like the most exciting story ever, right?! … Right? Well, I don’t know about you, but I’ve skimmed pages of pointless fighting in order to get back to the plot. Writing a book about a war promises excitement, […]
October 10, 2012 by 30 Comments Plotting Your NovelHow to Keep Your Fight Scenes Interesting
If you’re like me, you like nothing better than a good fictional fight scene. Aerial dogfights. Lightsaber duels. Gunfights at high noon. It’s all good. But this type of scene can be surprisingly difficult to write. How to keep your fight scenes interesting? The first problem, of course, is getting all your facts straight—because the […]
October 3, 2012 by 12 Comments Plotting Your NovelWhen Not to Show the Action in a Story
Action is given a lot of emphasis these days. It can manifest differently according to the needs of genre and the individual story, but the necessity for it never changes. However, within all this emphasis put upon showing action instead of telling it, we can sometimes lose sight of the fact that there are moments […]
June 10, 2012 by 16 Comments Most Common Writing MistakesMost Common Writing Mistakes: Non-Reactive and Over-Reactive Characters
Half of what your character does in your story is going to be reaction. Fiction is all about pushing and pulling. Your antagonist pushes your protagonist, and your protagonist moves away, considers the situation for a moment, then pushes right back. That’s reaction. That’s the essence of fiction. It’s what makes the dominoes fall. But […]
April 18, 2012 by 22 Comments CharactersIs Your Character Talking Too Much?
In real life, most people have a tendency to talk about what they’re going to do before they do it. We’re lying on the couch of an evening, talking to the cat purring on our stomachs, and we say something like, “I really should take that trash out, shouldn’t I?” We may even have to […]
April 15, 2012 by 12 Comments Structuring Your NovelThe Secrets of Story Structure, Pt. 8: The Second Half of the Second Act
Now that we’ve passed the midpoint, things are starting to heat up in our story. The second half of the second act is where your plot really starts popping. Your main character caps the dramatic event at the midpoint with his decision to stop reacting and start acting. Almost always, this is born of a personal revelation, even […]
