Tag Archive - scenes

The Not-So-Long Good-bye

Good-bye

Earlier in the year I covered some tips about creating scenes, and most particularly in discussion about your novel’s first scene. I mentioned that the first scene in your book carries a special burden, and if you’ve been faithfully following this blog, you’ll recall we spent a whopping five months on just your first scene! Now, as we approach the end of this year, with only nine posts to go to wrap up this year-long intensive look at writing the heart of your story, I want to shift from scene endings to ending scenes. Continue Reading…

Watch Your Tone

tuning fork

Since you need to establish the tone of your book right from the start, I want to spend a little bit of time discussing this element. Tone is a subtle thing, and it overlaps sound, style, and voice. I’ve already discussed voice in an earlier post, and where voice is really generated and inspired by your characters, tone is something more consistent and covers your whole book. Kind of like icing spread over the top of a multiflavor cake—the voice of all your characters being the different flavors. Continue Reading…

Endings That Spark Beginnings

sparks

I covered scene beginnings and middles over the last few weeks, so let’s look at endings. Just like beginnings, endings carry a special burden. The reader must be left with a feeling, like an aftertaste. So you need to stop and think. Just what feeling do you want the reader to have? Shock, sadness, warmth, confusion, curiosity? You want to keep in mind that the basic storytelling structure for a novel is action—reaction—action—reaction. Too many scenes end with a character experiencing something and then . . . it ends. We need to see how the character reacts to what has just happened. You don’t have to do this every time, and in some genres where plot is king (suspense/thrillers), you may often end with the building exploding and you have no idea if your character just died. But as a general rule, you want to be with your character and see their reaction, feeling, or response—even if just told in one line—to what has just happened. Continue Reading…

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