Hungry for more lists of rules? Kurt Vonnegut gives us these eight nuggets of wisdom (my comments interspersed): 1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted. Don’t pander, or write down to an audience for money. Write every story...
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Mark Twain gave us a great set of rules for a story, wrapped in a beautifully scathing critique of Fenimore Cooper’s books. The abridged rules: A tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere. The episodes of a tale shall be necessary parts of the tale, and shall help...
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Writing Excuses is a great writing podcast, hosted by writers Brandon Sanderson, Dan Wells, and Howard Tayler. They interviewed Patrick Rothfuss a couple years ago, and talked about Exposition. Exposition is the part of a book that sets the stage for the drama to...
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Dustin Tigner wrote an e-book on plot for the LegendFire.com writing community. Dustin presents the basic plot line as follows: Beginning (Change) Main Goal (Question) Middle Goal Confrontation Climax...
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Dan Wells gave an awesome talk on Story Structure at BYU’s science fiction and fantasy symposium: Life, the Universe, and Everything. He goes into great depth on the seven-point system...
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(And now, a word from our sponsor :)) If you’ve read Crawford Kilian’s essay on Developing Efficient Work Habits, you’ll have seen where he talks about keeping a log...
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