Tag: story
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Of Silence, The Three-Act Structure and Death…
Dreams are but stories that possess a beginning, middle and end. Recognizing this Aristotle superimposed this organization of dreams–his three-act structure onto that of plays and stories to render them more comprehensible. Dreams, like stories and plays, hold drama, and their trajectory of plot often includes a dilemma, even if the problem is one of…
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Of Mantras, Writing, and Knowing When to Tell…
Your story lives within you. Write with it rather than about it. –Martha Alderson of Plotwhisperer for Writers and Readers “Don’t talk your story out. Write it.” I heard that a lot during my participation in many writing workshops, but not so much like the almost broken mantra, “Show. Don’t tell,” regarding the development of…
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Of Pawns, Rooks, Knights and Bishops…
This weekend I played my first game of chess. My eldest now 23 learned the game from my husband. Like the cello, I have always admired people who played chess. It truly is a game of thought, forethought and reasoning. Unlike the game of checkers that I learned as a child and play with my…
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Of Bootstraps, Climbing and The Eye…
“Every piece of writing is a bootstrap affair whereby you use the crisis of the next sentence to get to the one beyond.” –Kris Saknussemm ( Write what you know–and be sorry) The Writer Magazine May 2010, author of the novels, Private Midnight and Zanesville The word bootstrap usually conjures ideas of a man-child walking…
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Of Narrative, Journeys, and What Compels Us to Write…
“Make up a story. Narrative is radical, creating us at the very moment it is being created.” –Toni Morrison, Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning author The protagonist, in reaching home, during this last chapter of the journey, must evidence that she or he has traveled, not simply waited steps beyond home, seconds beyond the gates of…
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Of Peeling Onions, Surrender and Writing from The Zone…
The stage of renewal in a story offers a second opportunity for rebirth. Unlike the crisis, the scenes of renewal focus on the inner life of the major character. Through the action of deciding and choosing to share the good news of her or his triumph in both word and deed, the protagonist now heads…
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Moviegoers, Story, and Dreams…
As movie studios lament the low numbers of moviegoers that seems to be dwindling the directors and producers seemed to going after gimmicks of technology to draw crowds back to the theater. Movies made in 3-D, and shown on Imax screens comprise the recent fads that are but an extension of forcing plot over character…