Smothered in an Avalanche of Ideas
What do you do when ideas come so fast they gum up the works, and the engine of your creativity grinds to a halt?
Maybe the problem isn’t where you are writing, but when…
Trouble Finding Inspiration for Your Novel?
Here are some ideas to help you get the ideas flowing…
Finding Inspiration for Writers
Inspiration can be hard to find. Here are a couple of tips for freeing up frozen creative gears and busting mental log jams.
Tricking the Muse: The Creativity “Two-Step”
Here’s a technique for making your Muse think that being productive is her idea…
Every story has a personality that is greater than the sum of its parts. Learn how to ensure all its facets are working together.
One Way to Beat Writers Block!
Here’s one way to sneak around writer’s block when it isn’t looking…
Writing from Your Passionate Self
How to supercharge the power of your storytelling by tapping into the seething cauldron of creativity just below the surface of your civilized veneer.
Here are four tips to help you develop your novel and improve the power of your storytelling.
Genre isn’t a list of requirements nor a box that limits your creative options. Find out how to create a story that honors your genre yet is uniquely its own style.
10 Essential Tips for Beginning Writers
Just starting out? This list of practical tips will help you get your novel written.
Creating a riveting plot requires putting one story point in front of another…
Be a Story Weaver – NOT a Story Mechanic!
No one reads a book because it has a great structure. So how do you find the right balance between structure and passion? This article will show you the way…
Remember blowing bubbles with that solution in the little bottles and the plastic wand?
The craft of writing is a bit like blowing bubbles, and this article will show you how to apply that perspective to help create the moments that comprise your story.
Writing from a Character’s Point of View
This article will show you how to make your story more personal by putting your readers into your characters’ shoes.’
The First Step in Writing ANY Novel
Before you write your first chapter, ponder your opening sentence, or jot down a single word, there’s one step you should always do first, no matter your genre or style.
How Art Is Made (The Battle Between Art and Mind)
It is the Eternal Struggle for writers: how to freely express one’s passions within the constraints of story structure. Here are a few tips for gaining the upper hand…
Genre isn’t a box you write in nor a list of stylistic requirements for your story. It is the personality of your story, and in this article you’ll learn how to grow your genre act by act.
Write Your Novel by Pulling Threads
Every idea has loose ends. By tugging on these, you can unravel an ever expanding story world and add richness to your characters, intrigue to your plot, and passion to your theme.
Creating Characters from Scratch
Character have two jobs: First, they should fulfill a dramatic function in your story. Second, they need to have real personalities so your readers or audience can connect to them at a passionate level. So how can you create such creatures? Here’s one way…
Whether your characters change through a leap of faith or overcome all pressures to hold onto their beliefs, their path to that moment of choice isn’t a straight one…
What follows is from an early unpublished draft of the book that ultimately became, Dramatica: A New Theory of Story. This excerpt is the opening introduction to the book in which we arrogantly state, “To that end, Dramatica does not just describe how stories work, but how they should work.”
Building characters that are intriguing, unusual, and memorable is a difficult task. Here are a few of my best tricks for creating characters from scratch and for developing characters you’ve already created. Read the complete article…
If you are a plot-oriented writer, here is a nifty technique from shaking a whole cast of characters out of the events that drive your story.
Throughlines – And How to Use Them
Stories are woven with individual threads. Learn how to identify your story threads and to spin them together into the tapestry of your tale.
Perhaps your hero isn’t the right guy for the job. Find out how to hold job interviews with your other characters to see if they should take over the position.
Is Your Story Coming Apart at the Themes?
Even when a story has memorable characters, a riveting plot and a fully developed genre, it may still be coming apart at the themes. In this article, we’ll find out how to recognize this problem, and what to do about it.
Eisenhower said, “Planning is vital; plans are useless.” Seeing the structure of your story as a military campaign can help you ensure that all the moving parts work together toward a common goal.
Characters: The Attributes of Age
Writers tend to create characters the same age as themselves and also have characters of other ages behave as if they were that same age. Here’s how to write characters who truly act their age…
Why do characters make excuses, and how can you write them so they come off as real people when they do?
Maximizing Your Creative Process
Rather than looking at what your story needs, turn it around to discover what you need to write that story. When you do, all manner of barriers to your creativity are removed. Read the article for complete details of this technique.
Grow Your Story from a Log Line
Creating a log line centers your story, provides it with an identity, and ensures that all your story development work will be guided by this beacon so your story becomes sharply focused and every element is clearly connected to the hub.
Creating Characters in 7 Steps
In this article you’ll discover a technique for drawing characters out of a one-sentence description of your story called a log line.
As your story draws to a conclusion, your reader have become heavily invested in your characters. So you’ll need to help them disentangle from those relationships before your story ends.
Get Into Your Characters’ Heads
One of the most powerful opportunities of the novel format is the ability to describe what a character is thinking. Learn how to transport your readers inside a character’s mind.
How to Grow a Sentence Into a Story
It may sound like hype, but here’s a simple step by step technique that can turn a little strand of story DNA in a fully developed tale.
Novels Don’t Have To Be Stories
A story must conform to the conventions of story structure, but a novel does not need to be so rigid…
Have Your Characters Write Their Own Stories
This technique will help you stand in your characters’ shoes and see the world through their eyes.
Stories can be written about characters who change or about characters who don’t. That’s the first part of your message. The second part is what happens to the character in the end as a result of their choice to change or not.
It is often assumed that a protagonist is the hero of a story. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Characters: Cogs in the Machine?
Are characters people or pawns? They are both, in fact, and your job as an author is to ensure your characters fulfill each of their roles.
Your Influence Character is the Heart of your Story
Your antagonist opposes the goals of your protagonist. But who opposes the beliefs of your main character?
It is an easy trap to create tired character types that follow societal expectations. How can you break out of that mold? Here’s a sure-fire technique for busting up stereotypes to create truly fresh and fascinating characters.
Choosing names for your characters can be perfunctory or can provide your readers or audience with insight into your characters’ natures, add humor or surprise, or even at the very least break out of ordinary monikers into the realm of the unusual.
Be Your Own Critic Without Being Critical
Apply this technique and you will expand your story quickly and easily into some fascinating new material.
The Four Throughlines in To Kill A Mockingbird
There are four throughlines that must be explored in every story for it to feel to readers or audience that the underlying issues have been fully examined and the message completely supported.
Archetypes represent human qualities we all share, such as Reason, Emotion, Faith, Skepticism, Conscience, and Temptation. Stereotypes represent the different kinds of personalities we encounter in life.
Plot isn’t the order in which events are presented in a story, but the order in which they happened to the characters. How do you keep both in sync?
How many times have you thought of a story, “Nobody would do that!” or “C’mon, that doesn’t even make sense.” What engenders those comments is our innate sense of story structure. But what is it?
As writers, we all know that characters need drive or their actions will come across as unmotivated. But what is drive, and where does it come from?
How To Create Archetypal Characters
Archetypal characters have a bad name. Many writers think such characters are two-dimensional stick figures that come off more like plot robots than real people. But the truth is that archetypes represent essential human qualities that need to be explored in every story.
Many writers focus on a Hero and a Villain as the primary characters in any story. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But as we are about to discover, there are so many other options for creative character construction.
What a character likes and dislikes takes the curse of its larger than life stature. To humanize your characters and bring them down to size, give them preferences rather than just points of view.
For characters to be both compelling and functional each must do two completely different jobs. In this article, you’ll help your characters learn the ropes.
Every writer knows a story needs a protagonist and an antagonist who battle over the goal, but equally important are the main and influence characters who battle over the message.
How to Create a Powerful Thematic Message
Your thematic argument is an emotional one, not one of reason. You need to sway your reader/audience to adopt your moral view as an author rather than telling them to adopt it.
What Is Truth? (The Character’s Dilemma)
To come off as real people, Characters must share the same conundrums we all do. And chief among these is determining what’s really going on so that we are able to make sound decisions.
Your Story’s Ending: Success or Failure?
Success and Failure don’t have to be binary choices; they can be matters of degree. But a story without a clear indication of success or failure is a failure with your readers or audience.
Do You Write Like an Actor or a Director?
Writer-Actors prefer to stand in the shoes of their characters and play the roles as they write. Writer-Directors stand outside the story and manipulate their characters to the best effect. In this article you’ll learn how to use each approach to the best advantage.
Do stories have a structure? And even if they do, is there really any way to figure out what it is? Based solely on the number of competing theories, one might suspect that either stories don’t have structures or that even those who spend their entire lives trying to figure it out, can’t!
Have You Lost Your Tale (and become one of the “Drudge People?”)
Drudge people. You see them every day. On the news. In your town. Outside your window. Perhaps, even in your own home…
Many writers are held back because they feel constrained by perceived limitations as to how they can express their story. In this article, you’ll learn how to break those bonds and unshackle your Muse!
In storytelling, we can add surprise to a story by leading the reader or audience to perceive something one way, than shift the context to show that it is really quite different.
Why Characters Misunderstand Each Other
Most arguments are not caused by conflicting points of view but by misinterpretation of the other person’s point of view.
HOW TO WRITE PLOT TWISTS
Writng a good plot twist requires two things:
1. Coming up with an unexpected change in direction of your plot that alters the course of your story.
2. Keeping that information from your readers until just the right moment to reveal it for maximum surprise.
As a technique, it is far easier to build a plot twist on your existing plot than to imagine one as a lone outlier and then try to connect it to the main.
To begin, suppose we have a story about a Marshall in an old west town who must overcome a notorious gang.
Rather than trying to invent a twist out of nowhere, ask a question you haven’t answered yet about your plot.
Question:
How does the Marshall first find out about the gang’s activities?
Now, let your Muse run wild and come up with as many potential answers as she can – from the sublime to the ricidulous
Answers:
1. The gang rides into town hootin’ and hollarin’ (pretty typical)
2. He is told about the situation, right after he accepts the job and pins on the badge. (minor twist)
3. He saw a newspaper account of the town’s gang problem and came there on his own to get the job to clean up the gang. (minor twist)
4. The gang sends a telegram to the marshall’s home to taunt him by letting him know they are in town shaking it down. (uncommnon twist – not major, but unexpected)
Okay – none of these are particularly “oh, wow!” but this is just the first step in the technique. Now, you want to pick one of those scenarios (which has added to your plot) and ask another question to advance the potential of your plot twist into even more surprising growund.
For example, let’s pick the following to develop from our initial answers to the initial question:
Answer 3: He saw a newspaper account of the town’s gang problem and came there on his own to get the job to clean up the gang.
Now ask questons about that answer, as you did before, but this time you’ll be farther along your plot thread, giving it even more of a twist.
Questions:
1. Where was he when he saw the newspaper?
2. Has he done this kind of thing before?
3. Why does he want to interfere?
4. What makes him think he is qualified to do anything about the problem?
5. Does he notify the town’s mayor or governing body before he shows up?
Then, you repeat the second “creative” step with your Muse and provide answers.
Example:
Question 2. Has he done this kind of thing before?
Answers:
1. Yes, he is independently wealthy and does this all the time as a hobby.
2. Yes, one time. His family was killed when he was a child and in his first adventure, he read a newspaper account of a child who was made an orphan due to a gang’s violence in a town in the East. He brought the gang to justice and found a foster home for the child. It was so fulfilling, his ordinary job has been miserable since, and this new article has made him realize he needs to step forward to give his live meaning.
I could go on and on, but you get the idea.
Now, through this exercise, what twists have we created for our story? Perhaps these:
1. A scene showing the Marshall as a young boy when his family was killed (by who and how and where can all be figured out using the Creative Two-Step).
2. A scene showing the Marshall see the first article and decide to get involved.
3. Several scene, perhaps in a montage or in a scrapbook of how that first adventure went.
4. A scene of him encountering this new newspaper article and how it affects him.
5. A scene of him quitting his job (how much he needs the money, what kind of job, and so on can be created using the two-step)
6. A scene of him arriving at the town.
7. How he gets the job (again, use the two-step to come up with ideas for this)
8. His first encounter with the gang (casual, antagonistic, high or low tension, anybody get hurt?, did the gang know he was the Marshall when they first encounter?)
The benefit of this technique is that by asking a questions, then providing multiple potential answers, then asking another question about the one you chose, your plot grows and twists at the same time, suggesting new scenes, new characters, and new thematic issues along the way.
Bottm line – don’t get mired in a random process of trying to force yourself to invent a startling plot twist. Simply apply this technique and let the plot twists suggest themselves.
Melanie Anne Phillips
Creator, StoryWeaver
Co-creator, Dramatica
Here are some links to some good stuff for writers:
My main website for writers – https://storymind.com
A library of the hundreds of writing tips I’ve penned – https://storymind.com/blog
My author page on Amazon – https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0744CGDLV
My YouTube channel with hundreds of writing tips and classes:
https://www.youtube.com/c/Storymind
My store for writers – https://storymind.3dcartstores.com/
And take the time to try my StoryWeaver story development online app RISK FREE for 90 days! Details at https://storymind.com/storyweaver.htm
When creating your Protagonist, don’t let him or her get bogged down with all kinds of additional dramatic jobs that may not be necessary for your particular story.
Is Your Antagonist Also Your Influence Character?
The Antagonist and the Influence Character do two different essential things, but both of those jobs can be given to the same person in your story if you play it right.
There may be a place waiting for the story you have to tell.
Perhaps the most fundamental error made by authors, whether novice or experienced, is that their characters, both male and female, tend to reflect the gender of the author.
Introducing Characters – First Impressions
First impressions have a tremendous impact that you can use either to establish or mislead your reader/audience as to the true nature of each character.
Developing Your Characters’ Points of View
Your characters aren’t going to be thinking about the plot the way you do. They can’t even see that there is a plot. Rather, they see their situation and have attitudes and feelings about it – some modest and some passionate.
How can you go about making your thematic point to your readers or audience without moralizing?
Don’t Try To Be Shakespeare – He didn’t!
You’re only as good as your own talent. Get over it!
Are You Writing a Tale or a Story?
A tale is a statement; a story is an argument. Learn how to make the best case for your story’s message without missing any beats.
Novel Writing Tip – Keep a Daily Log
Interesting notions and moments happen every day, but are easily forgotten. By keeping a log of these as they happen, you can pepper them into your story to amp up its energy.
Be Your Own Critic Without Being Critical
Apply this technique and you will expand that area of your story quickly and easily into some fascinating new material.
Have Your Characters Write Their Own Life Stories
This technique will help you stand in your characters’ shoes and see the world through their eyes.
If you know how to tap into it, your subconscious mind can infuse your story with more depth and meaning than you are consciously aware.
An overview of the technique I personally use to put my head in a good place as I develop my own stories.
Yes, writing is work. Although sometimes in the thrill of inspiration the process can be an amusement park of experiences, more often it is frustration, drudgery and stress. But what to do….
What Drives Your Main Character?
Why psychotherapy takes twenty years for us to arrive at the point a Main Character can reach in a two-hour movie or a two hundred-page book.
Writing Stories with “Collective” Goals
Sometimes the characters in your story are not after the same goal, but the same kind of goal.
From each piece, your story’s world can grow. Use this technique to add breadth, depth, and richness to your story.
How to pull individual dramatic threads into the tapestry of your story.
We’ve all heard of the hero’s journey that focuses on what stories need to be complete. But consider that it is equally important to explore what authors need to complete stories.
Forget Your Protagonist – Who’s Your Main Character?
While a protagonist is essential as the driver of the quest for your goal, the passion and message of your story revolves around your main character.
Is Story Structure Your Enemy?
In the real world of story development, perfect structure is a myth. Trying to make a story structure perfect will drain the life out of it.
In Search of Your Writer’s Identity
It starts with a single compromise to oneself – doing a job you hate in order to achieve something you want or putting your own art on hold to pay the bills. Find out how to rediscover your creative self.
There are four fundamental kinds of story cores, though each has endless variations.
Trying to juggle too many ideas that you haven’t yet written down is a sure way to gum up the works and grind to a creative halt. Here are some tips to break the log jam, or better yet, keep it from happening in the first place…
A Brief Introduction to Archetypes – Part 1
Here’s the first in a three article series describing the lynchpin archetypes that set the corners of your story.
A Brief Introduction to Archetypes – Part 2
A Brief Introduction to Archetypes – Part 3
Character Change vs. Character Growth
Plot Points – Static vs. Sequential
Story Structure for Passionate Writers
Jurassic Park: Building A Better Dinosaur
Protagonist and Antagonist – Who ARE These Guys?
Five Steps to a Believable Character
Dramatica Explained in Plain Language
Writing with Globular Clusters
Should Your Main Character Change or Remain Steadfast?
Stories with Characters who Change
Should Your Main Character Start or Stop?
A Screenwriter’s Bag of Tricks
The 12 Essential Questions Every Writer Should Answer
Story Structure is Based on Fours, Not Twos
How Dramatica Story Theory Maps to the I Ching
Dramatica Story Theory – Scenes & Elements
Let Your Plot Make Sense and Your Characters Ring True
Characters Don’t Have To Change To Grow
Is Your Main Character A Do-er Or Be-er?
Is Your Story a Time Lock or an Option Lock?
Is Your Story Driven By Action or Decision?
Conflict Can Limit Your Characters
Beginner’s Guide to Dramatica Software
Narrative Structure and the I Ching
My seven interesting but abortive attempts at an autobiography or, as the band They Might Be Giants put it, “The nicest of the damned.”
My book on the forces that underpin story structure.
My book of the best monochrome photographs I’ve taken over the past half century.
