Mary Brotherton

Posts Tagged ‘dramatic’

How many novels have you read with characters whose names annoy you? Maybe they remind you of someone in your office or share the same name as your ex. Perhaps the name is bothersome because you’ve seen it in so many other stories. It can be confusing for a writer with a new story; you [...]

Probably one of the hardest things, for many who try to maintain an active web blog, is keeping the content fresh. For me, it’s not that I don’t have current ideas and interesting things to say, but rather finding time to keep my own site updated. With the highly successful social networking sites and business [...]

1. Overcoming the monster — defeating some force, which threatens such as in Star Wars or James Bond. 2. The Quest — typically a group sets off in search of something and usually finds it as in Watership Down, Pilgrim’s Progress, Lord of the Rings. 3. Journey and Return — the hero journeys away from [...]

Condensing George Polti’s list of 36: 1 – [wo]man vs. nature 2 – [wo]man vs. man 3 – [wo]man vs. the environment 4 – [wo]man vs. machines/technology 5 – [wo]man vs. the supernatural 6 – [wo]man vs. self 7 – [wo]man vs. god/religion

Georges Polti developed a list to help writers and wrote a book with the same title that has explanations, examples, and variations. Most believe all situations in any story are supposed to fall into one of these categories. There may be more than one situation in the plot of a long story. Many of the [...]