Category Archives: Conflict
Struggle With Show, Don’t Tell? Try This Ultimate Description Toolkit
Today I’m sharing some amazing tools as part of Verbaleyze’s My Writing Toolkit event, in hopes you might find some new weapons in the battle for strong, compelling description. For those not familiar with VerbalEyze, they are a 501(c)3 nonprofit … Continue reading
Level Up Your Setting By Thinking Outside The Box
With writers, there seems to be two camps: those who love writing setting description, and those…who…don’t. There isn’t always a lot of middle ground. Becca is definitely in the former group. She’s freakishly good at world building. Each setting she … Continue reading
Deepen The Protagonist to Readers By Challenging His or Her Moral Beliefs
When we sit down to brainstorm a character, we think about possible qualities, flaws, quirks, habits, likes and dislikes that they might have. Then to dig deeper, we assemble their backstory, plotting out who influenced them, what experiences shaped them … Continue reading
How To Turn Your Setting Into An Obstacle Course
Becca and I are big believers in making the setting work hard in EVERY scene. A terrific way to do this is to turn a setting into a magnet for conflict. After all, the hero or heroine’s path to … Continue reading
Friends as Enemies
One thing that Angela and I discovered time and again as we put the Rural and Urban Setting Thesaurus books together is just how influential the setting is on a story. Setting has its collective fingers in a lot of … Continue reading
Conflict vs Tension
I’m in the middle of exploring a new story idea, which means I’m knee-deep in notes, questions, character interviews, and everything else that goes into the planning process. As Jo March liked to say, “Genius is burning,” and I’m terrified … Continue reading
Swoonworthy Characters, Pre-Apocalyptic Reading, and More
We’re in desperate straits, people. DESPERATE STRAITS. Due to my aversion to being sued for using permission-restricted images, I tried REALLY HARD to find the perfect public domain pics for today’s post. No dice. So I decided to make my … Continue reading
Conflict vs Tension
I’ve had a writing epiphany that I’m DYING to share with people who won’t stare blankly at me while I talk and smile politely when I’m done. Lucky all of you. One of my critiquers recently said something that made … Continue reading
Want High Stakes? Amp up the Stress!
In the real world, we avoid stress whenever possible but in writing, the opposite is true. Why? Because in the land of the Three Act Structure (TAS), STRESS = CONFLICT. In the TAS, our main character has a need or … Continue reading