BUT THAT JUST WOULDN’T HAPPEN – IT’S NOT AT ALL REALISTIC Oh dear. It’s like Mr But has taken over the section titles. He’s making a bid for total power. Mr But has more to say. I’m going to let him speak for as long as he wants: You’re taking examples from Hollywood movies – […]
WHAT IS A SCENE? Or, more usefully – WHEN IS A SCENE? Going back to our Winning dialogue, in which two people are both trying to win the argument, and so win the scene – there are only a very few ways this can play out. Underdog defeats Top Dog and becomes Top Dog (Change) […]
Writers are usually much better at spotting, and mocking, exposition in the work of other writers. In their own work, sections of disguised address to the reader (a.k.a. info-dump) are simply jobs that have to be done, one way or the other. It is a truth of writing that sometimes the ugly way is the […]
Now that you’ve had a go at the three models of dialogue, you may be thinking I have horribly oversimplified the complexity of how people talk to one another. Good. Now it’s time to think about how to do better. Mr But: And you said you were going to mention other possible models of dialogue. […]
ALL BY YOURSELF One of the biggest faults in stories by less experienced writers is that they are about extremely isolated people – people who start off by being isolated and don’t end up making much contact with others. This is not, in itself, a bad idea. There have been many wonderful stories about people […]
I am now going to give you a second definition of a story that, I hope, will from now on, forever after, make it easier for you to write stories that don’t just start but that go on through exciting, intensifying middles and reach satisfying, unpredictable ends. The second definition doesn’t undermine or contradict the […]
Vastation When it gets to curtain up, The Librettist is intimately uninvolved in the opera she has co-written. She is aware that, some time in the past, if her fingers had struck a different arrangement of keys, then what is about to happen would be other. That this character is already on stage – that […]
The first thing you need to write a novel is… Time. The second thing you need to write a novel is… More Time. And the third thing you need to write a novel is… Even More Time. This perhaps seems a bit obvious. But let me explain. Time, More Time and Even More Time […]
