Tag Archive - Novel Structure

The Essential Ingredient in Your Novel’s Concept

I want to talk about concept a bit today.

I believe a lot of novels fail at the concept stage.

I talk at length about this on my blog Live Write Thrive as well as in many of my books in The Writer’s Toolbox Series.

This is truth: if you have a weak concept for your novel, you shouldn’t waste time writing it.

Now, it’s possible to tweak the concept you have—and I detail many ways you can do that in my book—and come up with a killer concept.

But it’s crucial you take a look at your concept and make sure it will hold up. Continue Reading…

What Writers Can Learn from Fred the One-Eyed Cat

Today I want to talk about a one-eyed orange tabby cat named Fred. Some of you are saying, “Oh, yeah, I LOVE Fred!” And others are saying, “Uh . . . Fred who?”

Why should I spend time blogging about Fred? Is he some famous kitty? A character in great literature? No, quiet (well, he does meow) Fred is just a cat who has a role in the terrific movie Gifted.

But not just any role. Some might argue that Fred is a secondary character in the story, and while that may be true, he is actually a carefully crafted plot device for the story. And that’s why I’m bringing him up in this post.

While he rightly is a participant in what could be labeled accurately as a literal and iconic “pet the cat” (or “save the cat”) moment, he has a much more important part to play in Gifted. Continue Reading…

Write Your Story Synopsis with a Plug-and-Play Tool

Todays’ guest post is by Beth Barany.

There are brainstorming exercises you can take to plan your novel that are fun, take a short amount of time, and keep your enthusiasm up.

In my Plan Your Novel: 30-Day Writing Challenge course, we teach an accordion method that encourages you to start small and expand your story ideas outward.

In this post, I share one of the essential tools on story planning: how to write your story synopsis in a simple way: with a plug-and-play tool.

(For a list of other essential novel planning tools click HERE.) Continue Reading…

Page 4 of 16« First...«23456»10...Last »