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Literary Terms

Narrative as Interpreter in Fiction Writing

When we’re talking fiction writing, what really is narrative?  It’s everything that isn’t action and isn’t dialogue.  Which means it’s the glue that holds it all together. More directly, narrative is how we help the reader interpret the action and the dialogue.  We given them context on the history between two given characters – or […]

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Well, I wasn't expecting THAT!

This whole month, I want to talk about the relationship between writing and reading.  I’ve talked to so many writers who say they don’t read inside their own genre because they’re afraid of copying someone else’s idea.  (More on this later – I’m planning an entire post on genre as a conversation.)  Or they don’t […]

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Freytag's Pyramid

In 1863 Gustov Freytag, first known as a playwright and later a novelist, published Die Technik des Dramas.  (Released in English much later as Freytag’s Technique of the Drama: An Exposition of Dramatic Composition and Art.)  While his novels reflected some of the ugliness and turbulence of the time in which he was writing, the […]

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Well, Darlings, You're Weighing Us Down . . .

“Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.” – Stephen King (not the first person to say it, but perhaps the most ominous) It’s a common piece of advice to give to beginning writers, and it’s been attributed to everyone from Faulkner to Wilde.  Slate.com […]

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But I never got to . . .

I’m a big believer in the promises-made-to-your-reader philosophy of writing.  It’s the idea that readers file away everything you’ve laid out in the first few chapters of your story – and they expect you to follow up on it.  To see how this extends through your entire book, see the post back in January where […]

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Villain Under Construction: Villain Arcs

We’ve been talking character arcs at SNW, so I wanted to bring out once special kind of arc: the villain arc.  A good villain can really elevate your story, so take the time to fully develop all sides of your antagonist.  And then think about what makes him dynamic. The Backstory Arc Usually, the main […]

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