How to end a chapter? What's the big deal? When everything is all tied up, you move on, right? No. In fact, everything shouldn't be "all tied up" until the very end. In the body of your story, there should never be a place where everything is 100% good. Sure, the...
When I first started writing, I'd never heard of motivation reaction units (MRU). What I did know, though, was sometimes things just didn't seem to flow. Sections of prose would feel awkward and just not right. So I would re-read and re-word until they did. Even after...
Anyone a fan of The Maltese Falcon? How important is the Maltese Falcon in the story? Well, it’s ALL important and in the end, not important at all. The item itself turns out to have no real value to anyone—but what makes it important is it gets the characters and...
Writing point of view in fiction. It's a big deal. Choosing one point of view over another or one type of point of view over another can completely change the story you are telling. Writing point of view badly or sloppily can ruin the story you want to tell. Point of...
A while back Kathy Steffen and I taught a great group of writers from the Romance Writers of New Zealand what I consider to be the very first step in writing any book—nailing the Goal, Motivation, and Conflict of your main characters. (Also known as GMC: Goal...
Article Three in How to Write a Scene - Show Motivation with Sequel by Lori Devoti, a How To Write Fiction Series. Sequel Defined: (Swain, Techniques of the Selling Writer) “A sequel is a unit of transition that links two scenes....It sets forth your focal...
Article Two in How to Write a Scene, Scene Structure: Goal, Conflict, Disaster by Lori Devoti, a How To Write Fiction Series. Goal, Conflict, Disaster is the basic scene structure of every good scene and yes, this means every scene should have these three elements,...
Article One in How to Write a Scene, Scenes in Fiction by Lori Devoti, a How To Write Fiction Series. When I first started writing I sat through a number of workshops where multi-published NY Times-best-selling authors would spout what are and aren't scenes in...
What makes a book or movie special...makes it stick with you long after the cover is closed and the final credits have rolled? The special effects? The car chase? The slapstick comedy? Maybe for a while, but stories that really have lasting power contain one thing,...
