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Chase: A Fast-Paced Plot
My current WIP novel has a subplot of a chase, which is one of the 29 possible plot templates. Chase Plots are pretty straight forward. There’s a person chasing and a person being chased, the Chaser and the Victim. It’s an action plot, not a character plot (though always, character should be as strong as […]
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5 Quotes to Plot Your Novel By
I am currently slogging through plot development of a new series of novels. Here are some helpful quotes. “A plot is just one thing after another, a what and a what and a what.” Margaret Atwood. It is hard to narrow down the possibilities of a story to a particular “WHAT happened next?”. It is […]
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Timelines: Plotting
When you are deep into plotting a new novel or especially, a series, timelines are your friends. It’s a tool that will help straighten out the details and create order. Obviously, a time line lays out the time period of your novel. Does it take place in 24 hours or does it span 24 years? […]
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Plotting the Middle with the Hero’s Journey
The middle of a novel is one of the hardest places to plot. The set up is easy to imagine and the climax, of course, has to be exciting and emotional. But the sagging middle–how do you handle it? The Hero’s Journey is one of the most useful of the 29 plot templates because it […]
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Master Plot for Pacing, Characterization and Action
Somewhere in your writer’s head is a Master Plot, an idea of what a story or novel should be like, how it should progress. For writers who don’t outline–the write-by-the-seat-of-their-pants writers–the Master Plot is hard-wired into their brains. For the rest of us, the idea of a Master Plot is helpful. Hero’s Journey. The hero’s […]
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Bad, Worse, Worst: Plan your Plots
Every scene must end in disaster. Really? EVERY scene? OK. Most scenes. I only say that every scene must end in disaster because if I give writers wriggle room, they run with it. So, yes, let’s work on the premise that every scene must end in disaster. What disaster? How do you choose? Progressions. In […]