March 13th, 2008 — story
The characters are in a crucible. A catalyst starts the action and a chain of cause and effect leads to complications which build through a situation of crisis to a climax (where the hero faces catastrophe, the cataclysm), during which the main character is shown to have changed.
That’s my attempt at summarising plot or story structure. I’m not sure why I did it, or if it has any value. Perhaps you would care to be the judge of that.
- Climax: (catastrophe… the cataclysm).
Just be gentle with me when it comes to the mathematics– because there are, of course, 8 major Cs here (10 if you also include catastrophe, the impending cataclysm). But that didn’t fit the pun for the headline.
February 12th, 2008 — Mindset
A new writing site has been launched which looks like it could create innovative ways for writers to share ideas and feedback.
Scribophile is aimed mainly at authors, poets and so on. It’s bound to be of interest to anyone involved in creative writing.
It’s well designed and attractive to look at which isn’t always the case with writing sites, many of which look like throw-backs to the early days of the internet.
The people behind the site (one of whom is a regular reader of this site - hi Alex) intend Scribophile to become create a community of authors, who can help each other and provide support and appraisals of each other’s work.
As the site itself says:
Think of Scribophile as a writer’s workshop, but instead of being in a room with 20 or so other writers, you’re on the internet with millions of other writers, each of them eager to read your work and offer helpful critiques. We pride ourselves on our friendly and helpful community. You can meet other writers with similar interests and interact with thousands of other like-minded authors from around the world.
It’s very new so the community is just starting to build. It’s looks like a cracking idea well executed, so please support them and check out the site.
December 20th, 2007 — Writing
There’s a superb article on writing in the New York Times, which I spotted today because it made the front page of del.icio.us (via popurls.com). I’ve no idea why it’s surfaced now as it was published in July 2001. Elmore Leonard reveals some rules about good writing he has picked up along the way, mainly geared towards fiction. Well worth a read.
