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Three Workshops and a Blog Post

April 29, 2013

“Strive for perfection.  Settle for excellence.”   (Don Shula, football player, coach and restaurateur… who knew there is no “n” in that word?) Ask and ye shall receive.  Sometimes. One of my goals today was to come up with a worthy Storyfix post.  I was jonesing for something with intimacy, a little one-on-one commiseration – it’s been [...]

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The Psychology of Story Physics

April 25, 2013

A guest post by Kerry Boytzun There are writers — some who claim to know, others who simply don’t know — who aren’t buying into the notion of a “first plot point” as a useful or even necessary story milestone.  Those who believe that an earlier inciting incident is sufficient, wherever it appears, and that [...]

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The Flipside of Hero Empathy

April 18, 2013

Or… why you should be following “The Following” (the Fox Television series). Consider a workroom with twelve boxes and a desk.  Six of the boxes are labeled “Core Competency: …” and after that colon (one of those amazing double-edged words in the English language, this one with a smirk) there is a different name for [...]

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A Short Post on Short Stories…

April 13, 2013

… linking to a longer one. Two months ago I put out an open request for topics to be covered here on Storyfix.com.  There were 76 responders, with over a hundred topic suggestions. The most requested topic was this: short story structure. Specific questions come in frequently — daily — and almost always I’m able [...]

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Case Study: A Concept on the Brink

April 10, 2013

These are my favorite posts — case studies from story evaluations that demonstrate how a great concept can easily turn into an underwhelming story… and how this process can spot it and turn it around. Yes, it’s okay to learn from the pain of others.  Actually, from the resurrection of the stories of others. This [...]

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The Risky Middle Realm of Character

April 6, 2013

Avoid at all costs. Writing great characters is tough stuff.  In my view, the most challenging part of great storytelling.  You can get all the other complicated stuff exactly right – concept, structure, theme, scenes – and your story can still just sit there, a bowl of perfectly prepared oatmeal, without a lot going for [...]

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“Stay Tuned For Our Next Episode…” or Not.

April 3, 2013

You’re heard me rail and wail about episodic storytelling.   I’ve called it toxic, referred to it as a dreaded story-killer. Still think that, by the way.  But what the heck IS it? The differentiation between what is episodic and what is not is thin and in constant motion.  It is made all the more complicated [...]

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What’s Your ‘Vision’ For Your Story?

March 29, 2013

The third question I ask on the Questionnaire given to my story coaching clients, after genre and voice, is just that. Half of the writers presented with that question can’t answer it.  They either email me about it, asking what this means, or they answer this way: “I don’t know what you mean by vision.” [...]

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The Real Skinny on Conflict: Five Links and a Sample Chapter from “Story Physics”

March 22, 2013

Since we’ve been all over this subject lately, I think this is timely.  A reader contacted me about going deeper into an exploration of the differences between IDEA… CONCEPT… and PREMISE.  The differences are huge, and critically important in context to story development.  And yet, in casual conversation – even among agents and editors – the lines [...]

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A Webinar, Three Spiffs, and a Promise

March 19, 2013

(Check for an update on the “Side Effects” Deconstruction at the end of this post.) I truly believe that writing workshops can change your life.  Or that they should change your life. For many a killer workshop can become the primary catalytic event in the entire writing journey, a moment of clarity that flips the [...]

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