Tag Archives: plots
Three Requirements of a Book Review (?)
In a post entitled, “How Not to Write a Book Review,” Robert Pinsky, who has been writing reviews since typewriter days, discusses a famous and venomous book review a critic leveled at John Keats in 1818. http://www.slate.com/id/2299346/pagenum/all/#p2. The review, by … Continue reading
Filed under Book Reviews, Characters, Fantasy, Novels, Writing
Midnight in Paris: A Movie Review
Midnight in Paris, written and directed by Woody Allen, is a delightful romantic comedy and another of Allen’s meditations on the relationship between art and life, this time with time-travel in the mix. Want to see Ernest Hemingway speaking exactly … Continue reading
Kung Fu Panda 2: A Movie Review
Figuring that the return of Captain Jack Sparrow was an excuse to venture out to the movies again, I suggested to Mary that we see the latest Pirates of the Caribbean, but she had other ideas. She showed me the … Continue reading
Filed under Movies
Four Key Ingredients – Part Two
Wrestling with Originality: A real-life Example. It’s easy to talk in the abstract about things good fiction needs, but “originality” is an issue I have been wrestling with for real lately. Recent “market research” – checking book jacket blurbs in … Continue reading
Filed under Novels, Publishing, Uncategorized, Writing
Four Key Ingredients – Part One
Stories begin with ideas and these can come from anywhere. For some writers, some of the time, they may arrive fully formed, but I suspect that for most of us, they show up as seeds which we have to nourish … Continue reading
Water for Elephants: A Movie Review
There surely has been a drought this spring of movies worth venturing out to see, so I was pleased when Water for Elephants, based on a best selling novel, hit the theaters. The story is narrated by ninety year old … Continue reading
Filed under Movies
The Three Act Structure
In his book, Plot and Structure, (see the link in my previous post), author and speaker, James Scott Bell, offers this definition of his terms. Plot concerns the elements of a story, what happens. Structure is about the timing of … Continue reading
Filed under Screenwriting, Writing
Between a Plot and a Hard place
Okay, okay, so I should be pun-ished for a title like that. This post is really about finding one’s own right brain/left brain balance in plotting a novel, but I couldn’t work that into a catchy phrase. The topic was … Continue reading
Filed under Writing
Dwight Swain’s Motivation-Reaction Units
A recent discussion in one of my critique groups sent me back to my reference-of-choice for writing fiction, the book I would probably pick if I could have only one book on writing. This is the writing book I’ve read … Continue reading
Filed under Characters, Writing
