Choose the best form and genre for your story. Every story has a natural shape based on its length and genre. Some stories require a thousand pages, while others require only a one-page poem. Knowing your genre and carefully selecting a proper form help your story’s appeal. Form-Fitting A form describes…
Tag: genre fiction
One of the difficult lessons for aspiring writers is that realistic dialogue sounds strange to readers and audiences. What is realistic does not seem authentic. Do not write dialogue that mirrors the way people speak. Nobody will enjoy reading the dialogue in a book and nobody wants to hear authentic…
Stories fall into a handful of traditional structures. Many scholars have addressed this from disciplines ranging from anthropology to writing studies. Stories are about conflicts, inner and outer journeys of growth, and there are a limited number of potential conflict models. Likewise, a character either grows towards good, remains the…
An email exchange brought something into focus that I want to stress to all screenwriters and novelists hoping to pitch a film, series, or novel. A story needs to be unusual, yet obvious. The audience should anticipate some, but not all, of the conflicts and the outline of the story…
“I’m making a movie about a young filmmaker.” “My new play is about a struggling playwright in New York City.” “I’ve written a great book about a romance writer.” And then we have… “My new screenplay is about a playwright….” STOP IT. Please. Stop writing about being a writer and…
“This story is a movie. That other story needs to be a novel.” One of my pet peeves is the common assumption among writers that particular types of stories are best suited to a single medium. This assumption belies either a lack of skill or a lack of understanding and…
Students, seminar attendees, and visitors to our online writing guide have complained that my insistence on knowing (and adhering to) traditional story structures ignores “real art” in favor of production and publication. “You can break the rules after you master the rules,” I respond. “And then, only break them when…
You as a Brand If you are a writer or artist of any kind, you are a brand. I tell my students, every person is a brand: you become associated with a product or service. Your reputation for integrity and quality will proceed you. I could write a long essay…
Concluding our survey of book review formats, I want to explore the “analysis” or “coverage” that publishers and editors sometimes provide to authors. In the film industry, script coverage is something many screenwriters pay a consultant to provide. Knowing what others think about your manuscript helps identify when you didn’t…
One of my favorite features of GoodReads is the ability to get book recommendations based on books listed or ranked in your library. Using the GoodReads recommendations, I have already found dozens of new authors and books to try. The most recent book, After Dark by Jayne Castle, was one…