Plot & Structure Exercise 40: The Tool Chest [final exercise, to be updated constantly]

HERE I WILL SLIP AND SLIDE USEFUL TOOLS FOR WRITING — UPDATED: 11:11 AM, 26 Sept 2020

 

Motivation:

  • Tell stories of transformation (how did you change?)
  • Write about topics that fuel emotions (what upsets you, what politics, what news)
  • Great fears (of yours and of others)
  • Deep secrets (of yours and of others)

 

Plotting:

  • LOCK system (Lead, Objective, Conflict, Knockout)
  • ARM scenes (Action, Reaction, More action)
  • Three acts (Who? Bang! Settle.)
  • 2 doors of no return (end of act i, act ii)

 

Openings:

  • Hook, line, sinker (or grab, hold, drag)
  • Openings start with a disturbance to the normal (somnambulic) world, usually ignored
  • Openings end when the lead goes through the first door of no return

 

Characters:

  • Characters change from outside-in, or from inside-out (following: self-image, core beliefs, values, dominant attitudes, opinions)
  • They need to want something (usually to change)
  • Should feel something specific at all times (spoken or unspoken) generally an invigorating feeling or a defeating one
  • Jean Valjean vs Inspector Javert (honest good vs true evil, it’s still adult to write black and white)

 

Setting:

  • Remote, unfinished suburb — to paint unsupervised abandon
  • Underneath a beach peer — to paint drug troll
  • Different taxi’s around the world — to paint distanced intimacy

 

Description:

  • Use the right word
  • Less is more
  • Write to create experiences of the world around
  • Literary fiction feeds on the texture and mood of description

 

Dialogue:

  • Best is snappy, witty
  • Who talks the same as another?

 

P.S.:

  • After finishing the next novel, go through the checklist (appendix) at the end of James Scott Bell’s book and successfully tick all the boxes — if only for fun
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