I just finished Story Structure Demystified by Larry Brooks, and I think it’s the book I’ve been looking for all along. We’ve discussed “pantsing” vs. “plotting” here several times before, but the best thing about Larry’s book is that it gives you a structure to hang your work on, regardless of how you write. There
I’ve written in the past about wanting to make my story bigger. Not in word count, per se, but in feeling. The complexity of the story and characters have to be large enough–interesting enough–to carry the novel through 300+ pages. Thanks to my most wonderful critique partner, I now have some ideas for how to
I’ve mentioned before that I lean toward the pantser end of the scale, but with each subsequent book, I do more pre-planning. I know I need a pretty good idea of my destination and way points, or I’ll get completely lost, circle the midwest five times, and end up in Mexico if I’m not careful.
I was commenting on Larry Brooks’ upcoming deconstruction of Avatar over at storyfix.com, when I realized something about characterization: it’s all about perspective. Yeah, I know this is nothing new, but for some reason it clicked. You see, I didn’t expect to like Avatar. I’d heard that there was no plot, just pretty special effects. Well,