(spoilers for the movie, of course) the super mario bros. movie has an unusually clear story circle structure: 1. mario and luigi and their plumbing business... 2. and their mean ex-boss, and disappointed family. 3. "we're going to save Brooklyn!" but they get sucked into the
I'm noticing I can view a story as spacious, containing possibility. Oh, this paragraph is cool, I can see how that description of a fantasy animal gives the world a certain flavor of possibilities. This is the kind of world where you might end up needing to capture
When writing fiction, I have a problem where I write scenes and they go (in my judgment) nowhere. This is bad for two reasons: It's boring to read and so I'm going to have to cut a lot, but more importantly, it's boring to
I want to outline the sections from the third part of On Writing, the one called "On Writing." This is the part that's specific to fiction. I'll give brief summaries of each section and page numbers for the starts. The list: 1. Read a
When I try to write a story with no inspiration and no notes, the characters come out flat. There's little to go on to move things forward in an interesting direction. Apparently this is how things start even for Stephen King. From On Writing, page 164: The situation