Category: fiction writing techniques
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Novel Basics Cards # 18 & 19
Novel Basics Card # 18 The Reader Card The Reader Card asks the question, “Who will read my novel?” By now, you probably have a fairly good idea of who will want to read your novel. For one thing, chances are good that your target or ideal reader reads the same sorts of novels as…
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Novel Basics Card # 17
Novel Basics Card # 17 The Genre Card The Genre Card asks the question, “What kind of a novel will I write?” Ordinarily, I don’t ascribe to the saying, “Write what you know” because when writers don’t know something they need to put in their books, they do research. But in this case, I advise…
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Novel Basics Card # 16
Novel Basics Card # 16 The Subplot Card The subplot card asks the question, “What else happens in my novel?” The novel is a huge beast and needs a lot of plot to reach the minimum required 40,000 words that will go into it. One way a writer often finds those words is with subplots.…
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Novel Basics Cards # 14 & 15
Card # 14, the First Set-up Scene Card asks the question, “What leads to Act 2 of my novel?” Near the end of Act 1 of your novel, after you’ve hooked your reader with the beginning scene and shown your protagonist and her world, you need a scene in which the protagonist commits to the…
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Novel Basics Cards # 12 & 13
Novel Basics: Card # 12 The Climax Card The Climax Scene Card asks the question, “What’s the high point of my novel’s plot?” Back when I taught Creative Writing at one of America’s top community colleges, often as I introduced the topic of the moment of the highest intensity of your plot, the part of…
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Novel Basics: Cards # 10 and # 11
Novel Basics: Card # 10 The First Scene Card (aka the Hook) The First Scene Card asks the question, “How will my novel start?” Entire books have been written on the importance of the start of your novel. I won’t list any of these books here. But I will say that, above all else, the…
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Novel Basics: A Brief History of Plot
Novel Basics: A Brief History of Plot Way back in 4th Century BCE, the Greek philosopher Aristotle gave the first guidelines to plot structure when he said that a tragedy needs three parts: beginning, middle, and end, later called Act 1, Act 2, and Act 3. He also stated that the beginning isn’t necessarily…
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Novel Basics Card # 9
Novel Basics Card # 9 The Wall Card The Wall Card asks the question, “What could possibly go wrong?” In truth, Card # 9 is a placeholder because you will need lots more than just one wall or obstacle that keeps your protagonist from achieving her goal right away. This card is one of my…
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Novel Basics: Keeping a Journal
A Million Words One of my former colleagues used to tell his writing students that, in order to become writers, they had to produce and throw away a million words. That sounds daunting, doesn’t it? Another piece of advice goes, write a page a day and in a year you could write a novel. In…
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Novel Basics: Warming Up
A Writing Warmup Long ago in the ‘70’s in graduate school at the Ohio State University, I learned a warm-up writing technique that I used on the first day of every college writing class, no matter what kind, for the next thirty-five years of my writing career. Indeed, I used it in the sample class…