your story should not start with a villain, but should grow a villain.

model of a story contains the following elements: —The story must have a character —In a setting —With a meaningful conflict (some writers would suggest that the conflict be the most vital conflict that that character will face in his or her lifetime). Others would insist that if you care enough about the protagonist, even small conflicts will feel

as you are considering your characters and their world, look at how you can increase the tension in your story by adding duality to your world.

This leads toward another valuable way to look at a story: as a series of incidents that happen to a character, requiring the character’s response.

advise you that rather than have a scene set in Boise, Idaho, you should see if you can move it someplace more exotic and desirable, such as Paris or Monaco.

You don’t have to introduce the major conflict of your novel on the first page

A guide is often a teacher or mentor of some kind, an older person who trains our protagonist. The teaching may include life skills, teaching in how to behave, or it might include military training, martial arts, athletics, and so on.

When I talk about writing an opening, what I’m really talking about is the portion of a novel that typically occurs before my protagonist discovers that he has a “major, life-altering problem on his hands.” This might actually be more than a chapter. It might be four chapters, or five. In Hollywood there is a rule of thumb that says that your openi

In short, the least interesting of all conflicts tend to be man-versus-nature conflicts where no human agency is involved.