Things Have to Happen
some of us writers start out wanting to write excellent fiction (or nonfiction, in my case) and then get stuck because that’s . . . the wrong starting point? At the end of the day, the writing is just a vehicle for something else—some feeling about the world or human experience that you want to suggest or precipitate in your readers.
Mason Currey • What if your ambition outstrips your talent?
Saunders describes reading student novels that churn their wheels endlessly, stuck in exposition, no escalation in sight. I’ve written a lot of stuff like that. It’s not enough that things keep happening. The things that happen need to build on each other and intensify, like a snowball growing in size and speed as it pursues some Looney Tunes chara... See more
Justin • George Saunders on REVISION and CAUSALITY
The word “plot” on its own is pretty useless. It’s just a series of events that happen in a story. But structure is the order in which those events happen and, maybe even more importantly, the timing of when they happen. Then you add in a character who needs to change and does change by the end, and presto! You’ve got a story worth telling.
Jessica Brody • Save the Cat! Writes a Novel: The Last Book On Novel Writing You'll Ever Need
In workshop we sometimes say that what makes a piece of writing a story is that something happens within it that changes the character forever. (That’s a bit Draconian, but let’s go with it as a starting place.) So, we tell a certain story, starting at one time and ending at another, in order to frame that moment of change. (We don’t tell the story
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