
Latest from the Blog
All Downhill From Here: Story Structure in Act 2, Part 2
This blog is late. It’s late because I made the silly mistake of promising in my last post in this series that the next part would come “next week” i.e. the second half of November. Well, that didn’t happen, for a variety of reasons including getting behind on NaNoWriMo, exciting new health issues, and getting…
Stuck in the Middle With You: Story Structure in Act II
There’s no denying that storytelling can get messy in the middle. The middle of a novel may sag or slump, prone to descriptions like soggy, mushy, murky, or muddy. These damp and sticky terms reflect an experience familiar to many a writer. The often arduous process of drafting a story’s second act may feel a…
Setting the Stage for Story: Structuring the First Act
All you need to write a story is a beginning, a middle, and an end. The three-act structure sounds simple enough. It’s a classic, literally, originating with the theories of Aristotle and still central to much of the structural writing advice that floats around today. But drilling down into exactly how each act should work—and…
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