as we create fictional characters, it’s easy to focus only on one character and forget about who that character knows, and who their acquaintances know and how they know each other.
George R.R. Martin... introduces his exposition when it causes more conflict...
old information that causes conflict is all of the sudden fresh.http://www.speculatesf.com/2012/05/23/episode-45-of-speculate-brent-weeks-author-interview/
two friction-causing, conflict-creating, mutually exclusive needs.
in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Jane’s primary need is to marry and live with her soul mate, Rochester.
... Jane’s need to remain true to her moral duty, as well as her need to grow into the strength to truly stand as Rochester’s equal, impedes her from remaining with Rochester after she learns of his insane wife.
I have a very simple definition... A story arc is created when something in your writing gets repeated three times.http://talktoyouniverse.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/three-points-make-story-arc.html
who is {your protagonist}? Is he the brilliant young doctor that he imagines that he could be, or is he the pond scum that past evidence shows him to be? Well, that’s what the story is about.http://www.davidfarland.net/writing_tips/?a=81
if you know something doesn't work, you're right... don't give up and say "this is good enough"... keep going until you're happy with it
theoretically I knew that chapters don’t all have to be about the same length. Eric {Flint} made it real to me... Five hundred word scenes became chapters. A single telegram became a chapter... I discovered this was a technique that would make a particular scene or elements in that scene stand out and be more memorable than they would have been had they been buried in longer chapters.
Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey aren’t novels, per se, they are 400 solid pages of feelings (longing, in the same of Twilight, desire/curiosity/revulsion in the case of Shades). For me, both of them sunk their hooks into me (and about 40 million other people) so deep that I would constantly look up from the books, thinking, “This is such crap…and I can’t stop reading it!” Why? Feelings.
plot is... a narrative that starts with “guess what I saw today” and ends with “a real-live elephant on a downtown shopping spree.” Plot is a promise made and fulfilled. Plot is a character with a need. Plot is choices and actions.
For the sake of pacing, you usually want to drag out the description of {a simple but important action} so that it reflects the actual time that the action takes... to give it more prominence in the reader’s mind.
how do you do this? You add more words to extend the time that the reader spends reading... padding that adds to the reader’s experience
if you look at a tale as being about a character moving from one phase of life to another, you can immediately begin to see some of the conflicts you might want to establish, and you’ll get ideas for what needs to happen.
Gladiator... our protagonist moves from being “Most trusted general and family man,” to “accused traitor,” “to widower/bereft of family” to “slave” to “gladiator” to “arena champion” to “avenger” to “gaining heavenly reward.”http://www.davidfarland.com/writing_tips/?a=79
