Posts Tagged ‘plots’
Explosions: An Exercise for Plotting a Narrative
Cathy and I were having a perfectly pleasant Sunday. We’d had a lovely gathering of students the night before, had slept late, and then gone to brunch. I was in the kitchen, steeping a cup of tea, while Cathy was putting away some clean dishes. Somehow—she doesn’t really know how it happened—a Pyrex measuring cup…
Read MoreComplicated Motivations: Doing Work with Our Characters before The Writing Begins
For those of you following our lawnmower saga, I thought you might be interested to know that Cathy and I decided to order a 38-inch-cut rider from Ryobi. Yep, we’re going electric. Two hours of cutting time on a single charge, no gas, no oil, no spark plug. It’s supposed to arrive by June 1.…
Read MoreBlack Friday: What If?
Cathy and I were in Home Depot on Black Friday, looking at items for our front porch Christmas display, when an elderly woman with an empty shopping cart said to me, “I used to play Santa Claus.” It was a dreary night, cold and damp, but there in Home Depot surrounded by the artificial trees…
Read MorePressure Points in Narratives
I’ve told this story before, so please excuse me for telling it again. It has so much to do with everything I want to say about pressure points in narrative. On the last night that my mother lived independently, a package addressed to her neighbor was accidentally delivered to her. My mother was a kind…
Read MoreMystery and Reversal: The Art of a Story’s Middle
I’m thinking today particularly about those of us who write short stories. I know from my own experience, as well as from that of my students, that we often begin a story with a good deal of enthusiasm only to find it faltering in the middle. We spend so much time talking and thinking about…
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