Story Shapes - according to Chuck Wendig
Today, I'm posting a link to the latest post on Chuck Wendig's terrible minds blog.
Basically, it's about story shapes. It's written in typical Chuck style (which means language!), and I could never hope to paraphrase what he's written so I'll send you over to his site to read it for yourself. It's an incredibly good description of some methods you can use to build your own story shape and I know I shall be coming back to it frequently over the next few weeks as I start to work on Ani's story.
Er...yes... I know I started working on Ani's story a while back, but I have gone back to grass roots with it and started all over again. I wasn't happy with it, y'see. Couldn't find the right motivation for some of the characters and I'd stalled at the half-way point.
To get me going again, I re-read Les Edgerton's Hooked about openings, and tried to get to grips with Ani's story-worthy problem because what I had as an opening was a bit...boring, if I'm honest.
I also read Nicola Morgan's How to Write a Great Synopsis, which helped me to discover what the true heart of the story was.
As a result of reading both, the story has been simplified yet keeps many of the elements I'd written in before. And it actually has a story-worthy problem that wasn't what I first thought it was...
And now, I have Chuck's post as well.
I feel a story coming on... *scuttles off to grab a notebook and pen*
Basically, it's about story shapes. It's written in typical Chuck style (which means language!), and I could never hope to paraphrase what he's written so I'll send you over to his site to read it for yourself. It's an incredibly good description of some methods you can use to build your own story shape and I know I shall be coming back to it frequently over the next few weeks as I start to work on Ani's story.
Er...yes... I know I started working on Ani's story a while back, but I have gone back to grass roots with it and started all over again. I wasn't happy with it, y'see. Couldn't find the right motivation for some of the characters and I'd stalled at the half-way point.
To get me going again, I re-read Les Edgerton's Hooked about openings, and tried to get to grips with Ani's story-worthy problem because what I had as an opening was a bit...boring, if I'm honest.
As a result of reading both, the story has been simplified yet keeps many of the elements I'd written in before. And it actually has a story-worthy problem that wasn't what I first thought it was...
And now, I have Chuck's post as well.
I feel a story coming on... *scuttles off to grab a notebook and pen*