by Kelsey Card
Posted in Uncategorized, Writing Craft on Sep 2nd, 2010
You’ve finished your manuscript, sent it through spellchecker and you’re ready to go, right? Not necessarily. Spellchecker won’t catch everything. It’s a good place to start, it will catch mangled words (and some obvious grammar errors) but it won’t catch homonyms (words that sound the same but are spelled different like: there, their, they’re), words [...]
Posted in Writing Craft on Aug 27th, 2010
The Climax and Resolution (or Denouement) is the finally pillar or plot point. This is where the villain is defeated, the hero wins the heroine’s love (or vice versa), the murderer is apprehended, the one ring is thrown into the fires of Mordor…. If you write genre fiction the readers expect to see this final [...]
Posted in Writing Craft on Aug 26th, 2010
The Dark Moment is the moment when the worst possible thing that happens, happens. This is when it looks like all hope is lost, the magic thingy needed to save the world has been destroyed, the hero is dead, or the girl of your dreams has gone back to her ex-boyfriend. I’ve heard some people [...]
Posted in Writing Craft on Aug 25th, 2010
An excellent question from Josh on my Facebook page: “What do you see separating each act in the three-act structure? Is it enough that each act “feels” different (different location, different theme, different subplots at the forefront) and the transition itself is less important? Or is there a required storytelling milestone (PoNR, Dark Moment, etc.) [...]
Posted in Writing Craft on Aug 23rd, 2010
The Turning Points (and Mid-Point) always seem a little looser in the structure for me. These are major points where the story takes an unexpected turn. They are found in the second act (if we’re looking at three-act structure) (hmmm, perhaps I’m working in three-act structure and not mythic structure. I’ll have to look into [...]
Posted in Writing Craft on Aug 18th, 2010
The second mythic structure point I use is the Point of No Return. This is where the protagonist has no choice but to go forward on the journey (aka: the plot). Up until this point the hero or heroine has a choice to say no and return home. I often combine this point with the [...]
Posted in Writing Craft on Aug 17th, 2010
The first point I use is the Inciting Incident. In short the Inciting Incident is the first event that starts your protagonist on the journey of the plot. As I understand the mythic structure of the Hero’s Journey there is often a scene or two that shows the protagonist in the “real” world, in his [...]
Posted in Links, Writing Craft on Aug 13th, 2010
A few quick links of writing tips for your reading pleasure today. Agent Nathan Bransford has a humorous and helpful blog post for writing problems, “Do You Suffer From One of These Writing Maladies?” Every now and then I still stuffer from the second one down. Mr. Bransford’s post begins with a mention, in brackets, [...]
Posted in Writing Craft on Aug 12th, 2010
So on the topic of mythic structure, I thought I’d chat about the basics I’ve been using. Then, when I read Vogler’s book, we can learn if I’m completely mistaken. Here are my basics: • Inciting Incident • Point of No Return • Turning Points 1 & 2 (with a midpoint between them) • Dark [...]
Posted in Writing Craft on Aug 11th, 2010
Which is a rather dense, very informative, thesis on comparative mythology. When writers talk about the Hero’s Journey or mythic structure or the monomyth, they’re talking, in part, about the mythic similarities that Campbell discovered during his research. Now you might be asking why would I read Campbell’s book when there are other, excellent books [...]
