Try imagining the book that would light your heart and mind on fire if you came across it in a bookstore—the one that would quicken your pulse and keep you up all night reading. What would it be? Details, details: when, where, what, who? Think it up, imagine it fully, then bring it forth. That’s the book you should be writing.
if you are writing a novel and creating your own world... consider whether to include your own legendary beasts and monsters, things that aren’t real but which some of your characters could conceivably believe in. ... A culture’s myths and legends... [can] serve... to warn the reader that they would encounter many a strange thinghttp://www.davidfarland.com/writing_tips/?a=254
imagine watching your scene, but in a foreign language with the subtitles turned off. What does the talking feel like? What’s the emotion behind the words? Who’s in control?
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Let’s say Bob needs to tell Mary that her dog has been eaten by a python. As the writer, you need to decide not only what facts Bob knows, but how he’s anticipating Mary will react to the news. This will determine not only how he starts the conversation (“Say, you were talking about how you wanted to get a new dog, right?”) but every subsequent decision along the way.
PIRATING DIGITAL PROPERTY IS... taking something that someone has put effort into, in the hopes of making a living, and giving them nothing in return.
to sift through an array of possible motivations... The way to do that is not to ask, “What would make one man kill another?” Unless you’re a telepath... Better to ask, “What would make me kill someone?”
at some point in anything you practice, you stop learning new things--until you start teaching what you already know to others.
if your characters are doing things, even small things, those things will {often} change your characters.
Brick walls are not there to keep us out. Brick walls are there to show how badly we want something.
Nothing worth doing is easy... Writing is a LOT of work. Breaking into the industry is a torment worthy of the fifth or sixth circle of Hell. Face that. Expect it. Deal with it... It's difficult from the get go
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The true reward of breaking into the industry against all the odds isn't money. It isn't fame. It it isn't respect.
It's you.
It's confidence. It's satisfaction. It's well-deserved pride. Suddenly, the other challenges in your life are going to dwindle as well, because you know you'll be able to handle them.
in moments of action, when people are breaking down doors or ducking a bullet, they aren't feeling any deep complex emotions... In the moment {of preparation or aftermath}... there are deep complex emotions at play... {it} shows so much more than just a battle...it shows character and relationships.http://sevencamels.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/picking-right-moment-to-illustrate.html
A powerful story motif occurs when the anti-hero, because of the unfolding events, is forced to join the community.
Audiences don’t love set-pieces. They love characters who do amazing things during set-pieces.
often you find your voice when you look to what was the most difficult part of your life.
instead of (or in addition to) killing yourselves trying to concoct a great first line... how about giving some thought to what your opening scene looks like? It takes a lot of the pressure off that first page anxiety — because you're focused on conveying a powerful image that will intrigue and entice the reader into the book.
What do we see? How does it make us feel? How might it even be a miniature code of what the whole story is about?
One of my favorite opening images/sequences is the credits scene of The Shining. I don’t think there’s a creepier opening to be found anywhere in film. It’s all aerial camerawork of those vast, foreboding mountains as that tiny little car drives up, up, up toward what turns out to be the Overlook Hotel. It’s vertiginous, it’s ominous, it emphasizes the utter isolation of the hotel and the circumstances, and somehow, through the music and the visuals and the constant movement, Kubrick establishes a sense of huge, vast, and malevolent natural forces.
The opening image will sometimes —often — set up a location that will return in the final battle scene or in the resolution scene of the story — only at the end there will be a big visual contrast to show how much the hero/ine has changed.
I am a sneaky writer. I like to think of writing less as something that should be done (and done with a capital “W”) and more as something sort of naughty that I absolutely should not be doing because there are other capital letter (and lame) things to do like Cleaning.
In my story, I want to highlight how exceptional a particular relationship is, so I’m making sure to include horrible relationships in my plot as well.
Added link to the great articles webpage.
One technique that I find helpful is at the end of each story, I go through in editing and make a “dialog pass.” If I have a character, Bron, I will search for instances of “Bron said” so that I can pinpoint his scenes and make sure that his dialog sounds like it is coming from him.
"WRITE ONLY WHAT WE CAN SEE."
...IF YOU'RE WRITING "HE GREW UP IN A SMALL TOWN BACK..." IN YOUR ACTION LINES YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG... ANY GOOD DIRECTOR WILL SIT DOWN AND LOOK AT A PARAGRAPH THAT HAS NOTHING BUT CHARACTER HISTORY AND SAY "HOW THE FUCK CAN I SHOW THAT?"
MERYL STREEP'S CHARACTER IS ON A PLANE AND SHE'S ABOUT TO BE HANDED FOOD. SHE GOES TO GRAB HER WALLET TO PAY, BUT ATTENDANT INFORMS HER THEY'RE FREE. THE MEANING IS CLEAR: SHE'S NEVER BEEN ON A PLANE BEFORE...
IF YOU WRITE SOMETHING WE CAN'T SEE, IS NOT JUST MERE FAUX PAS, NOT JUST A COMPLETELY WASTED OPPORTUNITY, BUT A WRITING HABIT THAT WILL ACTIVELY MAKE THE MOVIE WORSE. YOU'RE PUTTING AN IDEA INTO THE FILMMAKERS HEAD THAT WILL MAKE TOTAL SENSE FOR YOUR STORY, HELP THEM GET IT, BUT IT WON'T HELP THE AUDIENCE GET IT.
If nothing (and no-one) else, your protagonist should end the story in a different state of mind to the one they began in, unless you're deliberately putting them back exactly where they started to show their lack of change or to emphasise small changes...
Going from a negative to a positive emotion gives the ending a greater positive impact because the reader is subconsiously aware they've been on an positive emotional journey with the protagonist.
Biggles and Tintin frequently follow this arc:
Boredom -> Increasing Determination -> Satisfaction
Some of the Nancy Drew books often do something similar:
Curiosity -> Increasing Fear -> Relief
The Harry Potter books are much more complex, containing multiple arcs, one of which is:
Alone -> Increasing Friendships -> Loved
You have a wild and crazy idea that flies in the face of everything you know and/or suspect to be screenwriting law? Do it!
Worst-case scenario, you gotta rewrite and rework whatever disaster you created. But best case — mind blowing awesomeness.
the implied statement {of a proposal}: I want to spend the rest of my life with you, forsaking all others, etc, from someone you feel the same way about - that is where the emotion comes in. If you want to up that emotion, a really romantic proposal works to an extent, but you get the most impact from... the reader {and character(s) themselves being} unable to see a way for these two characters they really care about to live happily ever after, so when it happens, it blows them away
...if {the readers are} in secret of the planning, then they get to anticipate and fear the proposal scene
The screenwriter should never write, “The house is a mess.”... Because we can’t see it. Instead, the screenwriter must show dirty clothes on the ground and the empty Chinese food containers tipped over on the coffee table. The trick is to use props and set-dressing (nouns) to convey the “messiness.”
The same holds true for character. The audience bases their first impression on the things they see. What does the character look like? What is he/she wearing?
It’s not enough to realize that you love a certain idea... figure out why you love that idea.
when you're a first level character in a game a wolf is a really impressive challenge... once you've leveled up... an army of kobolds can't take them out. {The gradual scaling of challenges alongside the scaling of character ability as they grow from their experiences} needs to be built into your rule system right from the start... else the story gets boring.
Is your setting and milieu historical or exotic? Work until you find one thing we’ll recognize from our own reality. What’s the generation gap like in Victorian England? Does your society of demon slayers have a long-standing fight at their meetings over refreshments?
Is your setting by intention ordinary? Find things in it that are peculiar, local and contradictory. What’s the food found nowhere else? What’s the odd annual festival? What local legend is unquestioned? Who’s at war on a miniature scale? What’s a big irony in this social realm?
How your character reacts to something gives your reader valuable clues as to how they should be reacting, what they should be learning from whatever just transpired, and how significant it is to the overall story.
a character is staring out the window at night when, suddenly, she sees a firefly turn into a fairy princess out on the lawn. What is her reaction? If she thinks “Oh, no! Not again! That means dad will make me go out there first thing tomorrow and wash the fairy dust off the grass…” then that tells the reader that fairies are common in this world, and a bit of a nuisance. Not only do we get the character’s attitude about the firefly fairy, but we get valuable worldbuilding information (especially if this is the first time we see that this world has magic/fantasy elements to it). If she thinks “WHAT THE F*** IS THAT?!?!?!?!?!” and runs screaming from the room, we may take that as our cue that firefly fairies are not the norm and that something truly odd is going on.
Does the plot build from... inciting incident to an inevitable climax?
when characters {the readers} care about get into a situation where the rules dictate they're going to get killed, that's where they start to get really worried
