Mad Iguana

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]

Hows the planning going, NaNo Denizens?? I have a title. That’s good, right?

Sorry @daedalus – for some reason your latest didn’t appear till after I’d posted the above. Really interesting breakdown there, I’d seen the film, and it came across to me (many moons ago, I admit) as extremely captivating and clever but essentially typical alpha-male adventure type thing. But no! PErhaps I should watch it again to pick up on all…[Read more]

I think I do a bit of both tbh. I do plot out the character arcs at the start, but things change as I write (as they do, the wee buggers), so by the end I need to do it all again for my major edit. That’s when Julie Cohen’s post-it notes come into play! I’m basically a walking advert for Julie and Craig.

@daedalus re the tragic/heroic thing – it…[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]

@janeshuff, that’s a great way of putting it. Yes, “the broad sweeps” and then refining in the edits.

I too tend not too worry too much about the overall structure when I’m actually in the thick of writing a first draft but I have found that reading the various books about structure has helped me be aware of the broad sweeps of the shape of a story as I’m thinking it out.

Thanks you both for your feedback.

@squidge — thanks for mentioning those sentences tripped you. I am sometimes unsure when a sentence makes me trip if it’s because it is or just because I am not used to it as English is not my first language.

@jonathan — thanks for spotting that typo, indeed it should be “lager” and not “larger”.

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

I struggle with using this sort of thing as any kind of scaffolding around which to build a story. I can’t even get on with the “Take off your pants” approach, though the book itself contains much of interest and value.

Where I do find it helpful (particularly this one) is when editing, because it can highlight areas that I may have touched on…[Read more]

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]

Sorry – I didn’t actually mean that story structure depicts mental illnesses.

More that psychologists have many different models to describe particular MH conditions. For example, for depression we have the CBT model, the psychoanalytic model, the interpersonal model, the biological model etc. etc. Each model is trying to describe and explain…[Read more]

Also @squidge – The entire universe makes profound and powerful sense when Craig talks!! 😀

@richardb and @squidge – I don’t think there’s anything wrong in not wanting to use models like these! I have a penchance for graphs, which is probably ~60% of why I love it! No – I like the tie-in between internal and external, but it’s definitely not for everyone.

@athelstone, yeah you’re totally right, I agree it’s foolish to think that any…[Read more]

I feel much the same way, Squidge. I never have been able to get on with charts, graphs, grids or any other kind of science-ish analysis. I’m not knocking it for those who find it useful, but my eyes start to glaze over when faced with such stuff, and it seems to place a barrier between me and my creativity (if any). I suppose I might conceivably…[Read more]

I remember doing these sessions at York…it all seemed to make perfect sense when CMT was explaining it, but I can’t put it into practise. I don’t think I have the kind of logical and structural mind that can break a story down into these kind of segments. Which is annoying, because I know it’s all good stuff and very useful – I just can’t apply…[Read more]

Very nice… There were a couple of points only that tripped me up in the reading:
‘Tasha and she nicked the lipstick’. Didn’t sound right. I wondered about ‘She’d nicked the lipstick when she was with Tasha’, but wasn’t sure how that’d affect your word count.
‘The salty scent of sweaty skin trapped in every pore’. I read this first as the sweaty…[Read more]

So I have been working on this story on and off trying to improve and refine it and I am keen to get some feedback on the latest version of it.

Also it has gone through a change of title and is now called ‘Bad Consequences’

Thanks!

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She had never seen a naked man before. She had glimpsed unclothed parts in isolation at the local…[Read more]