Browsing all articles tagged with plotting.
On Character Agency
What will a character do next? What can they do next? These are the questions that drive the narrative of a story forward and determine what direction it will follow. While they may follow a greater plot arc, the best characters have agency of their own that directs their narrative. Character agency is usually defined […]
As I Learn: How Your Story-Beast Moves
In the wild, lions live and hunt in prides. An adult male can weigh as much as 200 kg (mostly muscle), and an adult female can reach top speeds of 80 km/h—fitting since they do a lot of the hunting in the pride. These are creatures built for power and speed. Yet, these “Kings and […]
As I Learn: Or Why I Stopped Calling Myself A Pantser
Do you already know what type of writer you are? You may call yourself a discovery writer, an outliner or a mixture of both. We traditionally think of discovery writers, gardeners, and pantsers as writers who make up their stories as they go, and outliners, architects, and plotters as writers who pre-construct their plots before […]
Character Development: Character Death and the Ultimate Sacrifice
Killing a character in your novel is a tried and true method for advancing your plot. Allegiances are torn, revenge is sought, kingdoms fall apart. Character death feels as essential to the fantasy genre as magic—perhaps more-so. But in a narrative sense, is death really the “ultimate” sacrifice? The most effective character deaths are those […]
Weaving A Narrative
A story is more than its central plot tenants. It is more than the broad strokes of its grand events and dramatic moments. It is a woven tapestry of differing narrative threads and layers that weave together to create a cohesive whole. Yes there will be the macro arc of the greater plot that directs […]
Crafting A Fall: Turning Heroes to the Dark Side
Who doesn’t love to see a character go bad? A man pushed too far pushing back? A loyal but ambitious servant helping themselves for a change? A noble hero broken down into the blackest villain? To watch a character fall into darkness is a fascinating journey, seeing a character’s values crumble and twist, watching their […]
Knocking People Out: Easier In Fiction Than In Real Life
It’s a common scenario in many kinds of fiction, including fantasy: a character passes out, either because they’ve been knocked on the head or injured or drugged, and the world “goes black” or they “fall into darkness”. The unfortunate character usually wakes up several hours or days later in a new place, disoriented and sometimes […]
How Ideas Become Stories
One of the most common questions an author will hear is, “Where do you get your ideas from?” As if that was all you needed to write a successful book. Ideas are important, but they’re not some mystical spark from the divine, if you’re in the right mind-set you can probably come up with dozens […]
Taming MICE – The MICE Quotient and Storytelling
Fantasy is a genre of strange and diverse stories covering countless themes, concepts and ideas, in order to gain a better understanding of how our stories work and the nature of their structure, it can be useful to look at the ways they are categorised and study what traits make them what they are. The […]
Swinging the Scythe
Death is an essential part of many of our stories, whether it’s just the threat of it to provide peril for our protagonists, or having some of the characters actually bite the dust for reasons of plot or drama. If written well a death scene can have a great impact on the reader, triggering a […]
The Pros and Cons of a Macro Timescale
Most fantasy and science fiction series tend to be, by their very nature, large in scope. We expect stories about the fate of worlds, the rise and fall of empires, and history in the making. A book might still focus on a character’s personal, small-scale struggle, but it’s rare the focus will only be on […]
Tabletop Tuesday: Player Characters Keep It Interesting
Not long ago, I wrote about how important it is to be able to improvise when running a tabletop roleplaying game, whether the genre is fantasy, sci-fi, or something altogether different. This is because players are, above all, mad creatures who do not listen to either reason or instructions. If there is room in your […]
