If you want to be on the cutting edge in popular writing these days, there is a new format quite a few writers are following that you might want to try. In essence, it copies the format of a Netflix finite series. This format is very popular in on-demand TV, so if the market in books hasn’t developed yet, it soon will. The storyline borrows from soap operas, TV series, and Ken Burns-style historical documentaries. Continue reading “A New Novel Format: the Netflix Finite Series”
Tag: conflict
Conflict: The Heart of Storytelling
Storytelling is as old as human DNA. As old as language. As old as Joe Neanderthal sitting around the fire at the mouth of his cave, telling the group what happened that day.
“Me went hunting, threw rock at rabbit, killed it, brought it back. Good day. Ug.”
Okay, that’s a story, as far as it goes. Short, sweet, direct. But what’s missing? How might Joe have ramped up the tension in his story? How might he have grabbed the interest of his fellows, and pulled them in emotionally so they were invested in the outcome? Conflict.
How about this: Continue reading “Conflict: The Heart of Storytelling”
Conflict and Why You Need Some
Whether your fiction is plot- or character-driven, what’s really sitting behind the wheel of this bus is the conflict. Without conflict, your story will flop around like a quivering lump of protoplasm, kind of like Jabba the Hutt without the charm. Conflict drives story. It drives your characters to get off their asses and do something about the things that have been bothering them.
To keep the conflict in the forefront of my squirmy writer brain, I keep asking myself, “What does this character want?” Okay, right now one of my protagonists wants chocolate and a shoulder rub. Lovely aims, but hardly enough to make a reader stick around for three hundred pages. The conflict is too easily resolved. She can go to the store to buy chocolate, or pay a massage therapist to tend to her aching muscles. BUT… what if she is driven to the point of obsession to create the most sinfully delicious chocolate on the planet because her mother died in a freak chocolate fountain accident before she could realize her dream of being the next Willy Wonka? What if she is so hideously deformed that all of humankind recoils from her, except for the nice guy down the street…who is marrying a total bee-yotch next Saturday, and our gal is contemplating nefarious behavior involving rat poison and a bear trap?
Now there’s some conflict.
Continue reading “Conflict and Why You Need Some”