#studyblr story

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Writing Notes: The Shape of Story

by Christina Wodtke 

Start with Conflicted Characters

The character needs a goal, a motivation and a conflict.

The goal can be alien to your audience,

but the motivation must be shared by them, and

the conflict creates struggles that increase engagement.

Paint a Picture

Details transport you into the story.

The world disappears and you have a story play in your head.

Even though there are no literal pictures.

But be careful—Too many details and the story gets bogged down.

Make the Protagonist Suffer

“Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them - in order that the reader may see what they are made of.” (Kurt Vonnegut, How to Write a Great Story)

And when it can’t get any worse, make it worse before it gets better

The two key moments that create the peak of excitement in a story is the darkness before the dawn, and the dawn. 

The climax is the moment when the protagonist is either rescued or rescues themself.

In older tales, we saw a lot of Deux ex Machina (the hand of god) rescuing the hero. A hero could be rescued by luck, a partner, another hero…but modern audiences strongly prefer stories where the protagonist helps themself.

Resolution is Boring, Keep it Short

Interest grows with every additional conflict, but once the hero figures out the solution, our fascination collapses.

Don’t natter on while the audience’s mind is drifting.

Also Consider:

You need a good inciting incident to move your protagonist to action.

A setting is more than a place, it’s a situation and a moment in time. A vivid place has details.

Modern audiences prefer “return home changed” to “return home the same.”

EXAMPLES: ARCHETYPAL PLOTS ALONG THE ARC

Boy Meets Girl

Internal conflict is always satisfactory (e.g., she believes love interferes with his career, he believes love interferes with his beer.)

The crises usually revolves around betrayal — lying, cheating — and the climax shows it was a misunderstanding or we get atonement.

The struggle is always about them being separated.

The resolution is about binding them more tightly together than ever.

The Quest

You seek things, and find yourself.

Return home changed and don’t pass go.

Common elements include companions, a mentor, great losses and extreme character arcs.

The Underdog

Even though they do not have a shot in hell, the underdog wants something. They want it so bad.

Common elements include an enemy who blocks their path, and a coach who helps them forward.

In this case, they do not return home changed but rather move into a new life that fits their changed self.

Coming of Age

Naive person has the world teaches them a hard lesson, and they become a better person for it.

Struggle revolve around life sucking and then sucking more.

The hero grows and becomes better because of it, and via new understandings becomes competent.

In some tragedies, the world breaks them.

They can return home changed, but more often they move to a new life they have earned.

More Examples. Justice & Pursuit:

Weaving Multiple Plots:

Weaving multiple plots together to make subplots can further increase tension.

Multiple plots woven together makes the whole story not only unique but very compelling.

Writing Notes & References

[literaryaida]

20.06.24 | outline session today. had to do major structural changes so decided to start from scratch. felt demotivated for a while, i should just stop being so hard on myself and just write 😌

[galina]

Anyone's Ghost, August Thompson – enjoyed this advance review copy way more than I expected, it broke through my cynical shell and turned me into a soft wobbly mess. An angsty cheesy beautiful queer love story that will be a perfect crying-on-holiday read, comes out in July.

[literatureaesthetic]

thinking about elena ferrante and the neapolitan quartet and the line — 'if nothing could save us, not money, not a male body, and not even studying, we might as well destroy everything immediately.'

[joytri]

bucket list item: buying every single one of the clothbound penguin classics ever made

[benkyoutobentou]

language learning culture is always watching children’s media in various languages

[hangukkie]

한국 전래동화에 나오는 어회와 문법 ! - Vocabulary and grammar in traditional Korean fairytales !

English Translation:

———————————————————

Vocabulary:

옛날 - Olden days

옛날에 - Once upon a time

어머니/엄마 - Mum

그녀 - She/Her

돈 - Money

아들 - Son

딸 - Daughter

함께 - Together

숲 - Forest

어느 - Which

날 - Day

호랑이 - Tiger

떡 - Rice cake

더욱 더 - More and more

많이/많은 - Many/A lot

그 - He/Him

아이 - Kid/Child

아이들 - Kids/Children

옷 - Clothes

집 - House

꼬리 - Tail

밖 - Outside

나무 - Tree

꼭대기 - The top

하늘 - Sky

줄 - Rope

바닥 - Floor

오늘 - Today

해 - Sun

달 - Moon

Grammar - Verbs:

있다 - To exist

없다 - To not exist

살다 - To live

나타나다 - To appear

달다 - To ask/To request (In this context)

주다 - To give

원하다 - To want/To wish/To desire

먹다 - To eat

가다 - To go

가리다 - To cover

보다 - To see

도망가다 - To run away

올라가다 - To go up

자르다 - To cut

기도를 하다 - To pray

내리다 - To get off

떨어지다 - To fall

된다 - To become

Grammar - Sentence Forms:

라고 하다 - For indirect quotations

지다 - To become

도 - Too/Also/As well as

고 싶다 - To want

지 않다 - Is not

려고 - To intend to

시도하다 - To attempt to

Grammar - Connectives:

과 - And/With (With 받침)

하지만 - But

그래서 - So

그러나 - But/However

하고 (고) - And/With

Grammar - Markers/Particles:

에 - To/At (Location and time marker)

가 - Subject particle

는 - Topic particle

이 - Subject particle (With 받침)

에서 - At/In/On/From (Location marker)

에게 - To/For

을 - Object particle (With 받침)

를 - Object particle

들 - Plural marker

의 - Possessive marker

으로 - By/As/For/To/Towards/With (Directional marker)

로 - By/As/For/To/With (Directional marker - with 받침)

부터 - From/Since (Location and time marker)

은 - Topic particle (With 받침)

[love-in-my-twenties]

first 2 days of classes! I only had two lectures and my pe class by now but I'm really glad I'm back. I'm kinda mad, cause they changed a few of the places I really liked in my uni's student spaces but the coffee is still good and the library is exactly the same so that's what I'm focusing on. I've been weirdly depressed though, I don't really know what's happening but I hope it'll simply pass✨ (yeah cause that's how it works)

[gent-illmatic]

To my Nieces & Nephews:

Cheating is a choice. You don't just fall on it or in it.

The action is tremendously disrespectful and you are sending a clear message to your person that you don't value them (despite what comes out of your mouth). This is in regards to intentional romantic relationships, not arrangements.

No. shit doesn't "just happen"...it's a sequence of disrespectful events that leads to the climax.

Let's paint:

•They notice someone they're physically attracted to and approach

•They decide to converse and eventually flirt

•They test to find a mutual attraction

•They begin to cop cheap feels

• They may or may not disclose whether they're in a relationship

• They decide where to be intimate

• kissing, touching, snatching clothes, talking shit etc.

• switching positions all the way to CLIMAX

At any point they could've stopped to remind themselves , they have someone they claim to care about who would be devastated by this. Mind you, they may go back for 2nd & 3rds! When people claim "it just happened", it is an insult to injury and gaslighting! It was a decision and your feelings and value weren't worth a Nut! Think about that.

They lack loyalty, respect, discipline, and self control.

It's all Gods protection, leave them alone. Nobody can be stolen. They were a willing participant. Let the next POS deal with them, you have standards. Hopefully you realize you two aren't compatible and move on.

Why give 2nd and 3rd chances when someone more compatible is waiting for there first?! Don't help normalize toxicity and then whine when it spins the block!

For my folks who like to cheat...don't force yourself to be in a monogamous relationship because that's what's expected from society. Find your fellow freaks, it's less stressful. You're peeing in the dating pool and karma will send you an Invoice.

Stay blessed yall.

[literaryvein-reblogs]

6 Writing Tips from John Steinbeck

Pulitzer Prize winner and Nobel laureate John Steinbeck's (February 27, 1902–December 20, 1968) tips on writing, originally set down in a 1962 letter to the actor and writer Robert Wallsten, which was included in Steinbeck: A Life in Letters

Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised.

Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on. It also interferes with flow and rhythm which can only come from a kind of unconscious association with the material.

Forget your generalized audience. In the first place, the nameless, faceless audience will scare you to death and in the second place, unlike the theater, it doesn’t exist. In writing, your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person—a real person you know, or an imagined person and write to that one.

If a scene or a section gets the better of you and you still think you want it—bypass it and go on. When you have finished the whole you can come back to it and then you may find that the reason it gave trouble is because it didn’t belong there.

Beware of a scene that becomes too dear to you, dearer than the rest. It will usually be found that it is out of drawing.

If you are using dialogue—say it aloud as you write it. Only then will it have the sound of speech.

But perhaps most paradoxically yet poetically, 12 years prior — in 1963, immediately after receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature “for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humour and keen social perception” — Steinbeck issued a thoughtful disclaimer to all such advice:

If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another. The formula seems to lie solely in the aching urge of the writer to convey something he feels important to the reader. If the writer has that urge, he may sometimes, but by no means always, find the way to do it. You must perceive the excellence that makes a good story good or the errors that make a bad story. For a bad story is only an ineffective story.

[literaryaida]

27.04.24 | Do you believe in signs? I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember, and for the past 6 months, I finally summoned the courage to work on a book idea. I haven’t told anyone about it. But today, while browsing in this old bookstore, I stumbled upon a section labeled “Do you want to write a book?” and I picked up one particular book. As I tried to put it back on a slightly broken shelf, it fell into my hands again. I tried once more, and the book slipped from the shelf to the floor. The owner smiled and said, “Looks like a sign to me.” I blushed a bit, smiled back, and returned the book to the shelf. My friend joked, “Well, if you ever want to write a book, take that as a sign.”

[azacez]

Yes, it's okay to miss someone that you loved. It's okay to grieve even if the relationship ended badly. It's okay to have those memories wandering in your mind even though you know, you ain't going back to that time ever again. It's okay to suddenly want to cry over that someone and feeling fine right after, for a while because something reminded you of them.

You're a human, you have numerous amount of emotions, you are the embodiment of feelings and you probably loved them with your whole heart. They were a big part of your life so of course it hurts when suddenly they're not there. Even if they changed, even if things drifted slowly, even if you "deserved better", even if you're both supposed to have moved on by now, it can hurt. They made you really happy once. You made good memories with them, and a small part of you will always wish you could go back again. It's okay to feel this way. It's okay.

[literatureaesthetic]

march '24 favs:

• those who leave and those who stay & the story of the lost child ; elena ferrante — the final two books in the neapolitan novels, a tetrology recording the lives of two girls in naples from childhood to old age. gutting, beautiful, layered, and complex. this series is a masterpiece, elena ferrante is everything to me <3 (please read it!!)

• sirens and muses by antonia angress — following an array of characters at an art university as they navigate life, work, academia, relationships, and being an artist in a capitalist world where everything is commodified. the depth of characters paired with the nuanced discussions of art, class, and politics left me so pleasantly surprised. (it's also extremely gay and perfect for all you tumblr users with mummy/daddy issues)

[unadulteratedreviewwitch]

PhDing my way into 2024.

[merordle]

classics, short fiction

[randomwriteups26]

Always remeber procrastination makes easy things hard and hard things harder.

When ever you feel down or insecure just think that the expert in anything was also a beginner once...

@thelailasblog @thelostfilesofstudents @blushlillyyy @dr-scarlette-witch @stark-reading-mad @juliaxyn @angelicasdigitaldiary @academing