So recently, I've rambled a lot about plot, character, theme, and framing. But I'm sure you may be wondering, "How can this actually help me? Do any real stories benefit from this sort of rigor?" And to that I say, let's look at a story and see how it works. For this demonstration, I've picked none other than the first Equestria Girls movie. Now, while it has some great ideas here and there, I think you'll agree that it's a bit flawed. Let's get down to the nitty-gritty and see why that

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These days, most people get their entertainment from audiovisual media: movies, TV shows, video games, anime, the occasional play. My master's thesis was about the methods by which writers change their writing style depending on the media they are working for. The truth is, audiovisual media and alphabetic media (like stories) use very different techniques to convey meaning. Using the movie ones for a novel, or vice versa, will just make it seem weird, like you don't really understand how

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Hey, all! Y'all know me; I'm an inchoate half-asser. So, uh... here's my half-assed attempt at my official Writer's Workshop Compendium!

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Writer's Workshop Compendium
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There are two different writers battling in our heads: the mad genius who wants to write a six-million word epic, and the lazy genius who wants to do as little work as possible. You can write like J. R. R. Tolkien, all full of flowery descriptions and thoughtful details, or you can be Ernest Hemingway, with as few words as you need to get your point across. Putting detail into your stories is certainly not an exact science, but there are a few rules and tricks you can keep in mind to

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This time, we're talking about something a little more esoteric. Though, at the same time, I suppose it's also fundamental to the storywriting process. We're gonna talk about what happens when you put two people in a scene and have them talk to each other. To do this, I'm gonna steal two theoretical models from two very different sources: first, from the RPG system called DramaSystem; the second, from a psychological process called "Transactional Analysis."

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Well... one of my clients asked me the question. The question that haunts my nights and plagues my days. "If you hate -ing participial phrases so much, how can I actually fix it?" This is a really, really big question, which is why I usually default to either giving a specific way to solve it each time or saying, "Do it for yourself." But I've decided today is the day! I'm gonna try to explain as best as I can how to fix this problem once and for all! It's gonna be tough... not all of you will

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One of my clients is writing a story where their main character is incredibly overpowered. I've cautioned them that I fear there won't be enough challenge for this character, that it'll all seem too easy. But, you might say, what if I want my character to be strong? I like to tell stories about talented adventurers, chosen heroes, people of great skill! And I say to that, you're absolutely fine. It just means you'll have to accommodate your story to reflect this power. Plenty of the greatest

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Hey all! You may have heard this term before to describe a story, or perhaps you've only heard that it's really important. The Hero's Journey is one of the most basic story concepts there is. I describe it as a rags-to-riches story, because that's exactly what it is. It's such a fundamental story method that nearly every culture has a story that follows it. Let's dig into what it entails.

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All right, everyone. Hope you enjoyed the last post, because it's time to reveal what the big secret is. Lilly and Holly represent masculine and femi... wait, what's that? Georg totally blew my secret and revealed the answer in the last post? ...Oh.

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So, I had this really great workshop written up about "building up" stories versus "building down" stories, but then my computer bugged out, and I had to restart it. I lost everything. So now I'm gonna do a completely different one instead! This one's been a long time coming, which is a shame, considering how important it is. Friends, let's talk about figurative language!

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No, this isn't a post about the use of Biblical allegories (though I definitely need to do that some time). This is more about a story planning tool to help you keep track of all of the information in your story. I'm sure there are tons of different terms for it, but the one I've latched onto is the "story bible." Basically, a story bible is a compendium of all of the important facts about your story. Let's go over a few of the things you should have in it:

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This'll be a companion piece to my other workshop I put out today. When you set out on a new story, do you plan ahead of time how long it's going to be? By this, I don't necessarily mean the number of chapters or the order of the plot points. I literally mean, how many words is your story going to be? When you eventually put pen to paper, you'll need to know how much you intend to write. If you don't do this, have you considered that you might be writing too much or too little? There's a tempo

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Today, I'd like to talk about genre--what it means, how it applies to stories, and what you can do to improve your story's genre. A lot of this will be based off of Shawn Coyne's Story Grid, which you can find for free on his website if you're interested.

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Oh, sure, I could use a nice literary term like "cipher," but why not use the most inflammatory term I can think of? Let's talk about bland, faceless characters and how to give them the color and flair they need to be interesting characters.

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In my review of "Look Before You Sleep," I claimed that most of the episode felt pretty same-y. Most of it boils down to a single idea: Applejack is brash and dirty, while Rarity is refined and clean. It just keeps banging on that same idea over and over again. To punctuate the idea, I coined "the dialogue game," where you simply replace whatever a character is saying with a statement of their character trait; in "Look Before You Sleep," that'd be "I'm messy!" and "I'm snooty!" over and over

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Quick update for you guys. I've been crazy busy recently, but I thought I'd share a simple model I created for one of my clients that can help you understand how stories work. It's a quick little thing that looks like this:

1. What is the problem?
2. What is the solution?
3. At the start of the story, why can't the characters do the solution?
4. At the end of the story, why can the characters do the solution?

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Hey, everypony! How are things? Crazy finale, huh? Anyways, here's another topic that's been fluttering about in my mind. I've talked about dialogue tags in the past, but let's go more in-depth and look at how to do them right.

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So, quick recap: a dialogue tag is that thing that follows a bit of dialogue to to tell you who said it and how they said it. Like this:

"Welcome to the club," said the doorman.

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This Workshop ties pretty well to the last post I just talked about. It's also, admittedly, something I'm not very good at: establishing a narrator identity. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's talk about Watson and Doyle.

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Suppose you're watching a TV show, and all of a sudden, the characters get into a big argument and go their separate ways. You see this and ask, "Why did that happen?"

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Hey, everyone! Let's talk a little bit today about problem-solving. Conflict is the main part of stories, so solving them is naturally very important. But does everyone come at problems the same way? You may surprised to learn that there are basically two main ways people can take on problems. Here to help me are two young ladies, Lily and Holly. Let's do this a la the Dating Game! *Spanish Flea starts playing*

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We modern-day peeps love happy endings. Tell me, what was the last movie you saw that didn't end on an uncompromised happy note? That's not really how life works, though. Life isn't always that easy. Sometimes victory comes at a very high price. So let's talk about stories that buck the trend of happy endings and go for something a little more somber.

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