Idea: Plan a story's pathos as much as its logos

(Haven't tried this out yet, but it makes sense to me theoretically.) I default to planning a story's logos without emphasizing the pathos, and I think a reversal would make my outlines better. By better I mean they would go stale less quickly. When I wrote

Convincing myself I didn't like it

I notice a pattern of convincing myself I didn't like something. It goes like this: 1. I watch a movie. (Really it could be any experience — say a video game, a TV show, a book.) 2. I like it. 3. I read or hear someone talking shit about

Idea: Plan in relation to a specific story that you like

If I'm stuck on where a story should go, it seems to help to pick a similar story I'm familiar with and work from there. Identify the major scenes and ask whether I want to have parallels in my own story, and if so how I

Idea: Write the interesting parts first

(Haven't tried it yet, maybe I'll write about it when I do.) What if I just wrote the interesting parts of stories first? I wonder because I don't finish many stories. I write a lot of beginnings. I often feel like I'm

Write characters better with an emotional needs image board

Every character in a story needs to have some emotional needs they are acting from. For example: Respect, validation, safety, control, order, comfort, amusement, a feeling of competence, responsibility, protecting another, curiosity, fascination, obsession, compulsion, excitement, change, competition, mastery, skillfulness, challenge, justice, revenge, fairness, freedom, space, breathing room, independence, meaning,