Bad communication

It is ironic that in these days of instant messaging so many plots still depend on two or more central characters not communicating effectively with each other. OK, a lot of pre-Internet stories depend on someone missing a phone call or a messenger, but at least someone

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Plotting in reverse

This is Part II of me trying to answer LM’s query, specifically the part about backward planning—that is, starting with a climax scene and working out the plot backwards from that. I had a whole other post written, then realized that I had gotten distracted talking about

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Retelling Fairy Tales

Fairy tale retellings are a perennially popular both among readers and among writers. Since I’ve written a couple, I occasionally get questions or comments about writing them. The most common one comes from people who ask “How do you do that?” in a rather awestruck tone. I

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Perception and plotting

One of the writer complaints I hear regularly about plotting is some variation on “I can’t come up with a plot that’s compelling for the reader. I can’t make the reader care about what happens to the characters. I can’t make the reader care about what’s at

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How I plot?

This is my last blog post for 2022. (I always take the Tuesday between Christmas and New Year’s off, so next week will be an off-schedule Open Mic, and the count to the next one will reset on the first Tuesday of the year.) I asked a

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More on managing subplots

Will you do a post on how to handle subplots, specifically in a single-viewpoint story? I am relatively new to writing longer fiction and have never dealt with them before. –E. Beck My first reaction is that if you are having trouble with subplots, begin by ignoring

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Finding a plot

I’ve been plot-noodling with a couple of primarily character-centered writers lately, and I’ve noticed that they both have a similar problem. Most of the time, they don’t even see the places where they are dropping plot-hints…and when they do see them, they don’t immediately recognize them. One

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Looking at character-driven plot

I got quite a few requests in the last Open Mic, and I’m going to start working through them, beginning with this: Note the problem is not character story lacking, but putting together a single coherent plot that doesn’t consist of a character’s entire life story. I

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Poking at plot

Sooner or later, every writer seems to have trouble with plot, even writers for whom plot “comes naturally.” Part of the problem, I think, is that over the past twenty or thirty years, story structure has become thoroughly confused with plot. (I blame this largely on the

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Borrowing

Borrowing One of the shortcuts a writer can use for any of the Big Three story elements (plot, characters, setting/backstory) is to borrow them from somewhere else. “Somewhere else” covers a lot of ground; the caveat is that if one is going to borrow from anything that

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