People in real life wear masks to protect their real feelings and vulnerability.
Masks peeling away is a dramatic device
http://aerogrammestudio.com/2013/12/14/50-narrative-devices-for-non-fiction-storytellers/#more-5652 Slide 26
People in real life wear masks to protect their real feelings and vulnerability.
Masks peeling away is a dramatic device
in language... subjects act, objects are acted uponhttp://www.upworthy.com/being-a-sex-object-is-empowering-oh-wait-no-it-s-not-here-s-why-2
On Research... Books are not there to show how intelligent {the author is}. Books are there to show your soul.http://aerogrammestudio.com/2013/10/31/8-writing-tips-from-paulo-coelho/
no matter what you do with your life someone will criticize you. Cashier? Waiter? Truck driver? Someone isn't going to like something that you did. Some people were born to be d***s.
So fuhgeddaboutit. Write, be criticized, and keep writing. If you're going to be criticized, be criticized for telling your own stories/doing your own thing.
HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY... Even if you’re writing a Die Hard rip-off, have something to say about Die Hard rip-offs.
When a particular character isn't coming to life, I... write out what s/he would say for themselves in an interview.
'Why I did this...'
'why I'm ging to do that...'
'Why I'm right...'
...The reasons and excuses aren't so important, but the perspective is... an assertion of {the character's} own perspective...
self-justifications... don't get into my novels. They do influence... the scene where a character is confronted by the truth about themselves.
The audience has always wanted to absorb stories, always wanted to braid them into their social, intellectual and emotional tapestries.
...It’s about asking, “What do I want to write? What do I love? What do I want to read?” It’s about creating stories and art that are products of wonder and madness
Pick two people on the same side of a conflict, but give them completely different motivations for fighting on that side.
That which is unspoken defines the relationship.Given examples:
Those things you won’t talk about.http://writerunboxed.com/2013/12/13/things-left-unspoken/
The apology never given.
The explanation never provided.
The promise never followed through on.
The secret never shared.
The unspoken things that affect our relationships can also be those truths we keep from ourselves rather than the other person. We often hate most in others things that we fear in ourselves.
Your protagonist and antagonist don’t know when they’re in the middle of the story... they should be doing everything they can to end the story on the very next page
There are very few situations where every human being on the planet will respond the same way, so the cascading series of unique choices they make — each time altering how the story goes — is what makes them — and the story — come alive.
When you’ve done it right, you’ll look at your story and realize that it would have been an altogether different story with any other character in the same situation.
feed your characters / readers a steady diet of... cues that begin to add up to some conclusion... But the pieces don’t quite add up—so the reader must continue on. You keep your reader guessing.
I think one of the most important transitions a writer makes is when they stop relying on the idea to prop up the story and start thinking about how the story reads as {a whole}... In fact, most writers don’t get that far, and you can tell that their fiction is all a lead-up to the reveal of the end, or in support of a strong moment that isn’t actually a whole story.
Desire + Conflict = Dramahttp://www.danacameron.com/for-writers.html
Suspense is generated by the reader caring about what happens next.
when you’re looking for an opportunity to create surprise in your plot, ask yourself, “What couldn’t possibly happen?” In other words, stretch your imagination... you’ll probably come up with some surprising directions for your story.
When... critical information is woven into the story in a way that feels like it’s doing something else in the story, readers, in general, both miss it and remember it when you reveal that it was actually important. If you just mention it without it appearing to do something important, readers wonder why it’s included and are more likely to remember it.http://www.aisteach.com/blog/?p=1127
What makes the revelation so effective is not that we’ve been waiting for it, but that we never actually suspected it was there to begin with (although of course it was carefully set up for us from nearly the beginning of the film*).http://www.annleckie.com/2013/09/05/basis-suspense/
AS AN AUDIENCE MEMBER WE HAVE A PROBLEM IN THAT WE HAVE BASE WANTS AND YET ALSO HAVE GREATER INTELLECTUAL NEEDS. SURE, WE WANT HEROES TO SUCCEED AND BE REWARDED AND ALSO WANT THE WICKED TO BE PUNISHED. WE WANT THESE THINGS BECAUSE THE AVERAGE MOVIEGOER IS SO READY TO PLACE THEMSELVES IN THE PLACE OF THE MAIN CHARACTER. SO READY TO EMPATHIZE AND SEE THROUGH THAT PERSPECTIVE. AND AS PART OF THAT, WE INSTINCTIVELY DEMAND THAT EVERYTHING FALLS IN LINE PERFECTLY WITH THE SUBCONSCIOUSLY INGRAINED EXPECTATIONS OF "HOW STORIES WORK." NOW, SOME PEOPLE MISTAKE THOSE EXPECTATIONS FOR THE CONVENTIONS OF THE THREE ACT STRUCTURE (WHICH DOESN'T EXIST) OR A HOST OF DUMB RULES, BUT IT'S MORE THE SUBCONSCIOUS RULES OF CAUSE AND EFFECT. THERE'S A RHYTHM AND INHERENT TRUTH TO THINGS AND WHEN A MOVIE VIOLATES THAT UNSPOKEN CODE OF ETHICS WE REVOLT
Plot is simply the actions the characters take, the results of their action, and what they decide to do next. Except this can’t be any old action and result. It has to be action and result that builds the anxiety of suspense, surprise, and the mystery or puzzle...
There are four possible answers to the question of “did the hero’s action solve the problem?”: yes, no, yes but, no furthermore.
For example. Yes, you killed the monster. No, you didn’t. Yes, you killed the monster, but it bit you and now you have the virus that’s going to turn YOU into a monster. No, you didn’t kill the monster furthermore you woke up its mumma.
Of those four possiblities, only the last two build suspense and curiosity. The first removes it totally. So it’s out{ except at the end}. And a no answer leaves suspense unchanged. All you’re doing is delaying things with that. What you want to do is ratchet it up.
Don't ever make another writer's journey harder than it has to be.
pick a word that describes your character. For example: He’s compassionate. Then find another word that can also describe your character, but make it a polar opposite—terrorist... Giving a character a dual nature creates an instability, a lack of balance, that probably can’t stay forever.
Cultural appropriation takes place when a privileged group takes elements of an oppressed culture and uses them as it sees fit, without regard to their importance in the oppressed culture, often deforming them beyond recognition or distorting reality to the point of making the appropriated cultural practice take the place of the authentic one.
Your inciting incident... might have as few as one scene or as many as twenty—little snippets where your character discovers that he has a problem and that the problem... is life-altering
Any... fiction writer, in attempting to present a fleshed out world, will probably several times need to reference something outside the actual story, some past kingdom or mythical animal, some hobby of the lower classes, some religious detail, or a line about, “That time when grandmother got into a drinking contest with a Giant Stoat…” ... making the world a bit more solid.
Each person that you meet has something of an emotional tone about them. Some people are stern most of the time, while others might be thoughtful, pleasant, or excited.http://www.davidfarland.com/writing_tips/?a=271
Try to leave out the part{s} that readers tend to skip.
How far will that character go to fulfil their desires? Will he sacrifice the life of a member of his family to stay alive? Will she sacrifice her own life to kill him?
We know that if you experience the same thing over and over again, you get diminishing results. We have to constantly switch things up. That could be with story, characters, environment, or it could be with this "set-piece moment"
There are many different reasons for a good battle scene. Am I trying to give a proper end to a beloved character? Am I trying to resolve the grudge, or to determine who, in the end, is better? Am I using a fight to leave a cliff-hanger...? Am I writing a personal fight between two enemies, or a grand-scale battle which can determine the fate of a city? Or am I simply trying to wake up the readers after a long pause in the action? I do that. I admit it openly. There are times when I just want a reader to get his or her pulse pounding.http://blog.shelfari.com/my_weblog/2011/08/ra-salvatore-on-how-to-write-a-damn-good-fight-scene.html
Keep in mind that the injuries sustained during a fight will linger... Even if a person is never touched, and inflicts all the damage, there can be an emotional toll that character will walk away with