Chrissy

Yes, sorry, meant to congratulate the worthy winner – great, unsettling and dreamlike tale that owns the innate silliness of the tiny guitar and the bizarre phenomenon of the vast ukulele band. Great stuff, and thanks Sea for a challenging and fun competition

That’s great Alan, well done. The courses sound superb

Last day to put in an entry for the Den monthly competition, people… 🙂

Hi L,

I think you could trim most of the paragraphs in the first half of the story, really. The Physics thing (tight pants) early on could go, you use this analogy later on anyway. Watching a film at the cinema, that paragraph could be less wordy I think.
And towards the end – “zipped her hoodie and pulled the hood over her head” etc. I know…[Read more]

Ah, yes. Planning. It’s going…um…

Thanks Raine. I’ve seen the film numerous times over the years (the first being as a very small child) and have got different things from it each time. One reading would definitely be a clash between rival alpha males. And it’s definitely in the ‘high adventure’ tradition, but I do think there’s more to it than that. Not least as ultimatel…[Read more]

I think “Spotting an opening…” needs a new para. The lipstick thing is a little over complicated, I think you could shorten it without losing anything.
The “pills like skittles” analogy doesn’t work for me.
“Small-to-medium-time” seems a cop-out, he’s a small-time crook, I think.
“Anticipated to sit..” should be “anticipated sitting”.

I’d take…[Read more]

I was watching the film The Flight of the Phoenix earlier today, and this ‘arc’ kept occuring to me, so for the sake of curiosity I decided to have a look to see if it fit this structure, and if so, how. It’s a bit of an interesting case as it’s an ensemble piece with multiple ‘main’ characters, each with their own arc. I’ll consider it for the…[Read more]

Yeah, I tend to consider matters of formal structure far more in the edit than in the initial draft

Lots of interesting stuff here. I’ve never been much of a planner, and am inherently sceptical of the idea of story structure as something fixed and immutable for many of the reasons Libby raises. As structures go, however, I like this one more than most as it’s fixed to the inner life of the main character rather than something that risks being…[Read more]

Thanks for your notes, Raine. They are very helpful and come at a timely moment as I polish the structure of my novel in progress.

A few immediate thoughts which may not stand up to scrutiny. Athelstone wonders about the universality of such frameworks. This has always been my question too. They seem to me too rigid to allow for individual…[Read more]

This is great Raine. I’ve read a few structure books and I can see how they all reflect in this arc. It’s nice to have it in this concise summary. I’m going to print it out and pin it to the wall!