Transitions are tricky. In a scene you write in the moment, recording your character's thoughts, feelings, actions and—most imp...

In Save the Cat , Blake Snyder writes: “The first 10 pages is also where we start to plant every character tic, exhibit every behavio...

I know I’ve touched on this in a couple of previous posts. To be honest, there’s an old story I’ve written, one I love, but I know the s...

I know I said I would write about how to create a great story opening by introducing a minor mystery. I’m still going to write about ...

I finally published the first episode of my book on writing: Parts of Story: Plot ! To celebrate, and to say a big, huge, massive t...

In the previous chapter we discussed the structure of a sequel. Now lets talk about what a sequel does and how it does it. Jim Butche...

As Dwight V. Swain says in Techniques of the Selling Writer , sequels take the protagonist from the disaster of one scene to the goal o...

Every day I complete a writing exercise to help stretch my writing muscles. Lately, I've been thinking about sharing these exercis...

This material is drawn from Chapter Four of Dwight Swain's book Techniques of the Selling Writer . Dwight Swain writes: &qu...