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Melodrama tends to get a bad rep these days, and not without good reason. Certainly, melodrama – that is, sensational drama; exaggerated, flat characters; farcically exciting events; and extreme responses and actions – can often come at the expense of those other aspects of fiction that make your …
[Read more...] about The Author’s Guide To Melodrama (And What It Can Do For You)
Most of us are familiar with the idea that characters need to be multidimensional to be believable. E.M. Forster gave us terms for this discussion, ‘flat’ and ‘round’ characters, but the term ‘well-rounded’ predates Forster by at least a century, and the discussion of emotional complexity is as old …
[Read more...] about Primary and Secondary Emotions Can Unlock Your Characters
Literature and TV are chock-full of compelling but detestable protagonists. Even when these characters don’t undergo a dramatic transformation – à la Ebenezer Scrooge – they captivate an audience and are often wildly popular. Let’s explore what makes unlikable protagonists work. There’s a little bit …
[Read more...] about How To Make An Unlikable Protagonist Work For Your Story
In part 1 of this article, I talked about what an ensemble cast involves and the times that writing one might be the best fit for your story. If that convinced you to embrace the ensemble (or if that’s what you wanted to do anyway), welcome to part 2, in which I’ll be talking about the mechanics of …
[Read more...] about How (And Why) You Should Write An Ensemble Cast – Part 2
Writing an ensemble cast is harder than writing a single protagonist for the same reason that catching five cats is harder than catching one: you’re trying to do the same difficult thing multiple times, and the fact that you’ve already succeeded once doesn’t necessarily make the next step any easier …
[Read more...] about How (And Why) You Should Write An Ensemble Cast – Part 1
Time: you can ignore it, but you can’t escape it. With that sobering thought out of the way, let’s examine just what can be done about time in fiction. Just like in the real world, time and chronology will be present in your fiction whether you want them to be or not. You can choose to ignore …
[Read more...] about A Short Guide To Unusual Chronology
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