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A character’s ‘arc’ describes their internal journey over the course of a story, generally occasioned by the external events they encounter as it unfolds. If the person they are when they begin the book is where they ‘launch’ and the person they are at the end is where they ‘land’, then the path from one to the other is their ‘arc.’ Every fictional character worth their salt, from Harry Potter to …
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Do you remember story-mapping in grade school? I can picture it now: my bubbly, gel-pen lettering (man, I thought my handwriting was beautiful) inside a few dozen circles, spidered together with linking lines and connecting thoughts. When we got to high school, or college at the latest, our courses became too ‘serious’ for such time-consuming doodles. But maybe instead of junking this process …
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I may as well admit it now: Paul Auster’s The New York Trilogy was, of all the books I read last year, my favorite. It’s clever, serious fiction, but it’s silly, satisfying, and stylish too – it liberally plucks tropes, clichés, and ideas from different genres and plays with then, and its interweaving plotlines wrap around one another before uniting in strange and satisfying ways. Then there’s the …
[Read more...] about 6 Ways Paul Auster Can Help You Improve Your Writing
In 2008, Martin Amis, the maverick son of celebrated novelist Kingsley Amis, was named by The Times as one of the best British writers since 1945. This wasn’t such a shock; along with Salman Rushdie and Ian McEwan, Amis had dominated the British literary world since the 1980s, with classics such as Money, Time’s Arrow, and London Fields cementing his reputation as a sharp stylist, an acerbic …
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Kate Bernheimer is like fiction’s knight errant, on a mission to rescue fairy tales from the tall, dark tower where they’ve been locked away with other vestiges of childhood – like optimism and the color pink. Bernheimer’s writing style is magical and her modern fairy tales are understandably popular, but the average writer may think they don’t have much to learn from her unless they’re trying …
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Do you love a good subplot? I confess, I love a story with complex subplots and a big cast. I get a little thrill every time two characters meet for the first time. And I love getting to see how people and places are interconnected in ways the characters don’t realize. It’s a god-like perspective we humans aren’t granted in our earthly existence. Strong subplots are a hallmark of sophisticated …
[Read more...] about Layering Is The Secret To Crafting A Stronger Plot
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