 20 years of Master Class to Masterpiece |
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CRAFT TIPS Part 1: Write An apt quotation highlights and delights. Here you’ll find a vast array, hints of what our faculty will explore with you. Use these gems to strengthen your manuscript while you enjoy their inspiration and humor. Also see additional tips re: the elements of fiction (creating and critiquing). Post your favorite quotes where they’ll nudge you—keep your story on track, or help you discover new twists. Then attend our workshop and see how professionals bring these concepts to life in your story.
CHARACTER (and Plot) The slightest mistake of intent may not seem like much when you pinpoint your character’s Desire, but it will lead to a very different story in the end, just as two angled lines begin together, then grow farther and farther apart. — Brandilyn Collins, Getting into Character: Seven Secrets a Novelist Can Learn from Actors Action does not necessarily imply activity. An action objective can range from purely mechanical... to purely psychological — “to make a decision between two opportunities that beckon me.” — Brandilyn Collins, Getting into Character: Seven Secrets a Novelist Can Learn from Actors Just as your character approaches the novel in its entirety with a Desire, so she will approach each scene with an initial action objective—what she desires to accomplish in that scene. Make a character desire something, and make the desire his driving force. Then through a scene or summary create reasons why he can’t have what he wants, ever. Let him try to get it at all costs anyway. — Josip Novakovich, Fiction Writer’s Workshop The super-objective, or overall desire, of a character provides the foundation for action objectives in individual scenes. — Brandilyn Collins, Getting into Character: Seven Secrets a Novelist Can Learn from Actors If you cannot see clear action objectives that lead your character through the scene, cut it. Believe me; it will be boring. — Brandilyn Collins, Getting into Character: Seven Secrets a Novelist Can Learn from Actors The key to determining action objectives lies first in discovering your character’s Desire, or super-objective, that will propel her through the story. — Brandilyn Collins, Getting into Character: Seven Secrets a Novelist Can Learn from Actors The moment comes when a character does or says something you hadn’t thought about. At that moment he’s alive and you leave it to him. — Graham Greene My characters write my stories for me. They tell me what they want, then I tell them to get to it, and I follow as they run. Working at my typing as they rush to their destiny. — Ray Bradbury Your character’s emotions begin with you. You are the well from which every passion of your character—every tremble and smile and tear and jealousy—will be drawn. — Brandilyn Collins, Getting into Character: Seven Secrets a Novelist Can Learn from Actors If you want [readers] to feel the passions of your characters in all their glory, you—being at the starting point—will need to feel these passions as fully as possible yourself. — Brandilyn Collins, Getting into Character: Seven Secrets a Novelist Can Learn from Actors When our characters face situations outside the realm of our own experience... we need to search our own experiences for an emotion that reflects what the character is feeling. Remember, the emotion need only be a “seed” for the passions of your character. — Brandilyn Collins, Getting into Character: Seven Secrets a Novelist Can Learn from Actors Important secondary characters should have a Desire. — Brandilyn Collins, Getting into Character: Seven Secrets a Novelist Can Learn from Actors Review one or two of your scenes that seem flat and unexciting. What emotion memories can you employ to breathe life into the actions and feelings of the characters? — Brandilyn Collins, Getting into Character: Seven Secrets a Novelist Can Learn from Actors A certain emotion memory may cause you to rethink a character’s action objectives in a scene.” — Brandilyn Collins, Getting into Character: Seven Secrets a Novelist Can Learn from Actors Ultimate characterization is an art that requires our lifetime pursuit—a pursuit that rests upon fervent, continual studying and and recording of the human condition. — Brandilyn Collins, Getting into Character: Seven Secrets a Novelist Can Learn from Actors The only way to know the truth is to witness [a character] make choices under pressure to take one action or another in pursuit of his desire. As he chooses, he is. — Robert McKee, Story [To reveal character,] pressure is essential. Choices made when nothing is at risk mean little. It’s a mistake to copy life directly to the page. Few individuals are as clear in their complexity and as well delineated as a character. Instead, like Dr. Frankenstein, we build characters out of parts found. — Robert McKee, Story Structure and character are interlocked... If the writer reinvents character, he must reinvent story. A changed character must make new choices, take different actions, and live another story... — Robert McKee, Story The phrase “character-driven” is redundant. All stories are “character-driven.” Event design and character design mirror each other. Character cannot be expressed in depth except through the design of story. — Robert McKee, Story What does “character-driven” really mean? For too many writers it means “characterization-driven,” tissue-thin portraiture in which the mask may be well drawn but deep character is left underdeveloped and unexpressed. — Robert McKee, Story PLOT (and Character) Plots are what the writer sees with. — Eudora Welty One way of thinking about the suspense in your story is as a rubber band. You, the author, stretch the rubber band gradually over time, making drama in your plot more and more taut with every event, every plot point... After each scene or sequence you write, ask yourself, “How did this event stretch the rubber band?” — Robert Kernan, Building Better Plots Plot is no more than footprints left in the snow after your characters have run by on their way to incredible destinations. — Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing When a plot works, we feel what Scarlett, Oedipus, Captain Ahab, Frodo, and Bambi want more than anything else in the world. — Laird Koenig, novelist and playwright In the quest plot, the object of the search is everything to the protagonist, not simply an excuse for the action. — Ronald B. Tobias, 20 Master Plots [Movement from Point A to Point B] holds your readers’ attention because it arouses their natural curiosity. Where there is movement, there are questions: How are the two points connected? Why is this happening? How does the story end? — Stephen Wilbers, Keys to Great Writing Nothing moves forward in a story except through conflict. — Robert McKee, Story Conflict is the soul of story. — Robert McKee, Story [RE: writing a synopsis:] Does your hook contain the core conflict of the novel? — Writer’s Digest e-newsletter. Each defeat the character suffers [should be] more intense, more costly, as the story progresses. — Martha Alderson, Blockbuster Plots The structure of a play is always the story of how the birds come home to roost. A story is a web of mirrors, with each event not only tied to the others, but reflecting them from different angles. — Richard Cohen, Writer’s Mind: Crafting Fiction If you follow too many plot or subplot threads that move in too many directions, you dilute the narrative momentum. — Nancy Lamb, The Writer’s Guide to Crafting Stories for Children The plot outline is like a game plan in basketball or football. It can look good on a chart, but once the ball flies, it does not suffice... the plan is not sacred; it shifts, depending on the poition of the players on the field and on the flight of the ball in the wind. — Josip Novakovich, Fiction Writer’s Workshop Plot and story are not two separate entitites. .. a plot cannot be properly summarized and still be plot; it becomes a plot outline. — Josip Novakovich, Fiction Writer’s Workshop Though you may write happily without a plot, the reader may not enjoy reading a plotless story. — Josip Novakovich, Fiction Writer’s Workshop BEGINNINGS & ENDINGS I have spent many months on a first paragraph... In the first paragraph, you solve most of the problems of your [novel]. The theme is defined, the style, the tone. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez, author of 100 Years of Solitude I always know the ending; that’s where I start. — Toni Morrison If I didn’t know the ending of a story, I wouldn’t begin. I always write my last line, my last paragraph, my last page first. — Katherine Anne Porter The last thing that we find in making a book is to know what we must put first. — Blaise Pascal When I began to write, the one thing that I knew was: Every single thing you do, all the way through, has got to lead to a sound, inarguable conclusion. And so I... wrote the last line first, and I do so to this day. — Marcia Davenport A good ending... is not just a matter of blindly selecting [a contrived option]; you must decide what kind of story you’re telling and how the ending will reflect on the events and character struggles you’ve presented. — Raymond Obstfeld, Fiction First Aid For me, a good ending affects both the emotions and the intellect. — Raymond Obstfeld, Novelist’s Essential Guide to Crafting Scenes Writers can pack a lot of word-of-mouth buzz into the final 100 words of their fiction. So use your last lines to deliver the ultimate oh, wow! After the reader puts down the book, his reaction ought to be: “I can’t wait to tell somebody about this story.” — James V. Smith, Jr., author of Fiction Writer’s Brainstormer EXPOSITION Whenever possible, cut up background information and feed it to your reader in small pieces. [This] makes the background information less intrusive... and helps build suspense. Are your flashbacks... part of an otherwise unbroken scene and related to the action that is being described in the story’s “present”? — Evan Marshall, The Marshall Plan for Getting Your Novel Published Between one action objective and the next, you can introduce bits (not page after page!) of backstory that help explain [the] current objectives, and readers will... appreciate the backstory as a necessary part of the action objective itself. — Brandilyn Collins, Getting into Character: Seven Secrets a Novelist Can Learn from Actors BIBLIOGRAPHY Martha Alderson, Blockbuster Plots
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