This week, Alida, Robert, and Kathryn discuss the relationship between stakes and agency. How do these aspects of plot and character work together to create forward drive in your story?
SWRT 287 | Crafting Character Arcs
Crafting character arcs takes planning, but it’s not difficult, especially if you reverse engineer your protagonist’s big shift.
SWRT 064 | Story Collections, Novel-in-Stories, Serialization
How do you approach a short story collection? And when do you know you are writing one? What is the difference between a collection of short stories and a novel-in-stories? And what are the challenges of writing a short story collection? Why do some genre’s seem to lend themselves to serialization? And what is the difference between a serialized work, and a collection of short stories?
SWRT 063 | Short Stories: How they differ from novels
We all know short stories are short, but how does that change the way you write them? What is it with short stories and the ambiguous ending? And how can you tell if you are writing a short story, a lead magnet, or just a scene? Short stories are a great tool to use to better your writing craft so go out and write some, read some more, and enjoy yourself!
SWRT 062 | Energizing Dialogue
What should you do with dialogue heavy passages? How can you break it up? Should you worry about it in the first draft? What are revision techniques to catch your dialogue heavy sections? How can you approach teaching your character? What are some techniques to layer in information? And how do you use them correctly? The most important thing is to focus on what you want to achieve, and figure out how best to communicate that with your reader.
SWRT 061 | Character Motivation
How do we address character motivation? Do we struggle with it? When do we work it into our stories? How can you get to know your character better in order to develop that motivation? What are the three layers of motivation? And how do you plan for your characters motivation over a series? What happens when your character has competing motivations?
SWRT 060 | Everything You Need to Know About Show, Don’t Tell, part 2
What is psychic distance and filtering? How can we use our writers gaze properly? How do you get rid of your frame and allow the reader to fill in the gaps? Don’t forget to use all your senses and put your characters in action in your space in order to show effectively.
SWRT 059 | Everything You Want to Know About Show, Don’t Tell
What does “show, don’t tell” actually mean? And how is it misleading? How should you use narrative summary to your benefit as a writer? Do you need scene breaks? And how do you make your telling showy? How present is your narrator? And what are the dangers of losing your narrator in a first-person point of view?
SWRT 058 | Narrative Drive with Emma Darwin
What is narrative drive? And why is it so important to your story? How can you craft drive with characters choices, cause, and effect? What happens when your character comes alive? How does it affect your plot, their agency, and the surprising inevitability of your story? And finally what are some ways you can develop these narrative drive skills?
SWRT 057 | Historical Fiction with Emma Darwin
What drew Emma to historical fiction, and what is it’s allure? How important is your motivation for writing, and what you are trying to communicate to your reader? How does theme drive your story? Emma explains some ways she uses structural tools to make her writing better. And finally, we talk about the trap of authenticity in our writing.
SWRT 056 | First Encounter Fiction
Why do first encounter stories fascinate us? What sort of problems are typical in first encounter fiction? How does it make us deal with our own humanity? And how can you use first encounters outside of its typical alien invasion genre?