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Events can be external -- a change in a character's circumstances or relationships. Or events can be internal, as in a new realization or a decision. In either case, the event must change things moving forward. As Aristotle pointed out, a story is a series of events linked by cause and effect. For instance, imagine your character wins a lottery.
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Short Story: "The Lesser Evil" from The Witcher Series. An...
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A consultant can help you structure the main character's arc...
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Nonethless, when you're writing a plot-driven story they can...
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Screenwriter Blyde Snyder wrote a book called Save the Cat...
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Oct 26, 2016 · One opening event causes things to splinter apart for the main character in your novel. After that, there’s a chain of events that are all linked and caused by the ones that precede them. A story moves from choice to consequences, from stimulus to response, from cause to effect.
- The Sequence of Events in A Story Makes A Difference
- The Reader as An Active Participant
- Before A Sequence Comes A Scene
- Suspense, Surprise, and Curiosity
- Don’T Withhold Important Information
- The Standard Murder Mystery
- Two Exercises to Study Sequence of Events in A Story
- More Ways Than One
- Suspense, The Renewable Resource
The chronological order of events in a story is not always the best way to deliver the information to the reader. I remember reading passages in William Faulkner’s A Rose for Emilyin a college literature course. I felt struck by the way Faulkner moved his narrative around in time, creating a complex, multi-dimensional reading experience. Faulkner w...
Readers get the most satisfaction from reading a story when they are engaged as active participants. Many factors go into making this happen. One of the most critical components is information flow—when a writer delivers everything the reader needs to know, in a timely fashion. Given the right information, at the right time, readers should be able ...
Before we get into the sequence of events in a story, however, it's worth taking a pause to review what a scene is. In order for story structures to work, writers need to learn the craft of writing a scene. Once they can do this, they strengthen their skill of sequencing scenes in order to form acts, or other units of story. A logical sequence will...
How a writer orders the events in a scene can determine a reader's response to the story. There are three main responses a reader could feel: suspense, surprise, or curiosity. Let’s examine this by changing around the order of the following four events in a scene: Suspensedepends upon providing something for the reader to worry about and delaying t...
Lisa Cron’s book Wired for Story,is structured on a Myth/Reality basis. Here’s one of the Myths she puts forth: And here’s the Reality: She follows up by warning, “If we don’t know there’s intrigue afoot, then there is no intrigue afoot.” To get a better idea of what this means, let’s try an experiment. First, I’ll sketch out a scene where I’ve wit...
As writers, we get to choose which events to include, and how to order them. In a standard murder mystery, the main events might unfold like this: Writers can present events in that order, but it’s often more interesting to mix them up. Choosing to reveal the origin of the motive toward the end of the story will build suspense and keep the reader g...
Let's look at two exercises that will help you understand more about how to order events in a story to achieve the effect you want. One of the exercises—the study of chronologyversus presentation—examines the overall big picture. The other exercise—dealing with theflow of details—focuses on the micro view.
Suspense works best when you set up multiple possibilities for your character. The reader needs to be able to identify more than one potential outcome, ideally at least one positive and one negative. Worry increases when the negative outcome seems the more likely, especially as you raise the stakes,increasing the odds against your hero. Readers are...
There is an emotional factor in anticipating an outcome—either dread or excitement. That’s what makes it possible for us to read, watch, or listen to the retelling of a story more than once and again enjoy it. The elements of suspense are still at work, sparking the emotions of anticipation, because the reader is an active participant. Whether you'...
Dec 9, 2017 · Using our own experiences can be a great jumping-off point for a novel… as long as we concentrate on telling a great story instead of sticking too closely to what actually happened. So if you’re writing autobiographical fiction, or a novel inspired by your life, how do you do it well?
Remember, a compelling sequence isn't just a series of events but a chain of cause-and-effect relationships that push the story forward. Your novel will be divided into three acts – the beginning, middle, and end. These acts structure your plot and provide a roadmap for your story's direction.
Apr 6, 2017 · Most people think of timelines as a way to create a calendar of events that happen throughout a story…and they’d be right. It’s a handy way to plot time sensitive events, like the order of battles in a war that will put your character on the throne, or the clues your mystery sleuth discovers at crime scenes as he hunts for a serial killer:
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Aug 13, 2022 · Plot is the series of events that make up your story, including the order in which they occur and how they relate to each other. Structure (also known as narrative structure), is the overall design or layout of your story.
