In any long term creative endeavor, there is a limit to how much you can really plan out ahead of time. Of course, you can always make detailed outlines, but […]
Read moreCategory: plotting
Perils of the Writer: Plotting and Crafting Action Scenes
So, I’m a planner and an outliner. I’ve made this pretty clear. Without plotting out a clear path of where I’m going to go in a story, I’m going to […]
Read moreAnalyzing Flawed Arc Structure, Part 5
Parts one, two, three and four of looking at Star Trek: Enterprise‘s third season Xindi Arc. “Home”, the third episode* of the fourth season of Star Trek: Enterprise served as […]
Read moreAnalyzing Flawed Arc Structure, Part 4
Parts one, two and three. The third act of the Xindi Arc is pretty action packed. On some level, it does make up for the heel-dragging and aimlessness of the […]
Read moreAnalyzing Flawed Arc Structure, Part 3
A continuation of my analysis of the Xindi-arc of Star Trek: Enterprise. Parts one and two. The argument could be made that the first third was a “slow build”, putting […]
Read moreAnalyzing Flawed Arc Structure, Part 2
As I mentioned earlier, I’m analyzing a flawed structure as part of an exercise to improve my own writing, specifically using the third “Xindi Arc” season of Star Trek: Enterprise. […]
Read morePerils of the Writer: The Slow Process of Getting the Ball Rolling
¡Feliz día de los muertos! We’re now in November, which for some writerly types, means NaNoWriMo, aka Nation Novel Writing Month. If you aren’t in the know, participants pledge to […]
Read moreEvolving from a Fandom of One
Back at the ArmadilloCon Workshop, the fantastic Mark Finn talked a bit about that moment that many writers dread: when someone approaches you with “the idea”. Now, in this case, […]
Read moreLoading Up Chekhov’s Armory
“If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it’s not […]
Read moreAvengers and Twelve-Part Structure
I had been thinking about movies and the studio-system’s somewhat slavish devotion to “three act structure”, which more and more I’m seeing as a big problem in modern cinema, and […]
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