Part 6 of The Do’s and Don’ts of Storytelling According to Marvel Got a flabby story on your hands? No problem, I got a flashy cure: story conflict. Now, before you roll your eyes and board the Yeah-Yeah-Heard-That-Before-Got-It-Thanks train, let me check your ticket. Because story conflict is neither so simplistic, nor so easy as many […]
July 4, 2016 by 46 Comments Most Common Writing MistakesMost Common Writing Mistakes, Pt. 52: Stagnant Story Conflict
What’s so hard about story conflict? You throw your protagonist and your antagonist onto the page–insta-conflict! Right? Actually, not so fast. Turns out creating a fascinating story world in which dwells a fascinating hero and an evil villain is not enough, in itself, to create integral and interesting story conflict. I’ve read quite a few unfortunate […]
June 24, 2016 by 74 Comments Plotting Your NovelHow (Not) to Write Satisfying Action Scenes
Part 2 of The Do’s and Don’ts of Storytelling According to Marvel Imagine this. You sit down to write the biggest action scenes in your entire story. They’re gonna be epic. Giants will collide. Empires will topple. The conflict will be definitively decided once and for all–and readers will be glued to the page. This is, no doubt, exactly what the folks […]
June 20, 2016 by 227 Comments Plotting Your NovelHow to Plot a Book: Start With the Antagonist
I hate antagonists. Not so much because they’re, you know, the bad guys. No, I hate them because 90% of the time, they bore me into catatonia. Evil plan to take over the world? Yawn. Just please do whatever you gotta do to make the hero look good. That’s how many authors approach their antagonists–as an […]
June 10, 2016 by 58 Comments Plotting Your NovelHow to Write the Perfect Plot (in 2 Easy Steps)
How do you create a story? You start writing and stuff starts happening. Right? True enough that’s how you write a story, but it is not, in fact, how to write the perfect plot. That takes a little more forethought and effort. When we first start out as writers, we tend to have this belief that telling […]
March 17, 2016 by 52 Comments Plotting Your NovelLearn to Write Deep and Rich Story Conflict
What is story anyway? We could explain it in any number of ways, but it’s hard to come up with anything pithier or more accurate than the old saw: No story conflict, no story. If we flip that on its head, we could just as easily say: Story=conflict. Why? Obviously, conflict is pretty entertaining on its own […]
February 1, 2016 by 69 Comments Most Common Writing MistakesMost Common Writing Mistakes, Pt. 48: No Conflict Between Characters
I slapped the FedEx guy this morning. Okay, not really. My FedEx guy is totally cool. And he brings me cool stuff. I’d never slap him. But that got your attention, didn’t it? Way more so than if I ‘d said, “I thanked the FedEx guy this morning.” The difference between the two accounts, of […]
November 23, 2015 by 58 Comments CharactersHow to Write Multiple Antagonists (What I Learned Writing Storming)
You may have a great plot and a great protagonist, but without an equally great antagonist, you’re going to be stuck spinning your story’s wheels. That’s no problem. Just stick in a great bad guy! But what happens when even that’s not enough? Sometimes your story is going to require not just one, but multiple antagonists. […]
August 28, 2015 by 27 Comments Plotting Your NovelThe Pixar Way to Think About Story Conflict
This week’s video offers two lessons you can learn from the complicated story conflict in Toy Story to improve your own writing. Video Transcript: Conflict, conflict, conflict! It’s like this mantra among fiction writers, right? And we all nod our heads in agreement, because we all know story conflict is integral to good storytelling. But […]
July 8, 2015 by 16 Comments Plotting Your NovelWhat Jurassic Park Can Teach You About Compounding Conflict in Your Story
Think your story is falling a little flat? The problem might be that your conflict is too one-sided. The most interesting stories are always those that result from the complex interweaving of various threads of compounding conflict. In his book The Anatomy of Story, John Truby talks about “four-corner opposition”: A simplistic opposition between characters […]
