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What Went Wrong? Story Conflict and How to Make it Stronger
In your story or novel, something must go wrong. Without conflict, there is no story. As you develop a plot, it’s helpful to think about what is the worst thing that could happen and then figure out if you can make that even worse? The absolute worst thing–the thing your character fears most of all–MUST…
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Up the Stakes
So What? That’s the question you must get past in your fiction. Why should a reader care? Keep Reader’s Interest: Make Everything Matter More The best way to make a reader care about your story, your novel is to make things matter more, put more at risk, up the stakes. Personal Stakes This can be…
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Develop Sympathy with Character Traits 9
Use Character Traits to Make Your Character Sympathetic Yesterday, we looked at 9 character traits that can be used to develop sympathy for your character. Today, we’ll look at using those traits in your story. It’s not enough just to tell yourself, or write on a checklist, that your character has these traits and is,…
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10 Checkpoints for Scenes
Does your Scene Pass this Checklist? Where/When. (Setting) Did you orient the reader at the beginning of the scene? Does the reader know where this takes place: room in house, city, state, country, etc? Does the reader know when this takes place: time of day, season of year, place within chronology of story? If the…