According to Eric Edson, the author of The Story Solution, a stunning surprise is one of the crucial parts of every story, whether it’s told in a shape of a novel, a movie or a drama. Stunning surprise should come out of the blue and it should shock the protagonist. Sometimes there can be hints that something might happen, but when it comes, the receiver of the story should only think of: Oh, I didn’t see
If you ever feel like being stuck in the outlining process, it’s time to quit and move on to the actual writing. This morning I’ve got fed up with endless outlining after I’ve been doing it for months. It feels like I haven’t moved from the beginning at all and I know that once I start writing, I would ignore the outline anyway but there is something that has been keeping me in one place
In the first two parts of these series, we talked about the ideal reader and the story idea. Today, we are talking about the three-act structure. If you haven’t seen our previous articles, you might want to check them out before moving to this one. If you have ever read any book on writing, you are definitely familiar with the term, three-act structure. But, what is a three-act structure? Do you really have to stick with
Last week, we’ve talked about finding your ideal reader. If you haven’t seen that article, you might want to check this before reading this one. Where do I begin? Writers often hear the question – Where do you get your story ideas? My answer is – I think of a character and a goal. That’s the easiest way to get a story idea and you should do that at the beginning of every story-writing process.
First of all, welcome to the first in a series of articles on how to outline a novel. Many writers despise outlining, but it doesn’t always have to be something bad and tedious; it might as well be a creative and enjoyable process. Disclaimer Some writers don’t use any form of outlining. They just sit down and write. There is a popular term for those writers; they are called pantsers because they write by the