Story Genius Scene Cards.

We come for something much deeper, much more meaningful: inside info on how to survive in this glorious, cruel, beautiful world, and in style no less.

by focusing on how what’s happening is affecting your protagonist internally—what she’s thinking, how she makes sense of it, and what then spurs her action—you’re mastering one of the most elusive, least-taught facets of storytelling.

Story is about an internal struggle, not an external one. It’s about what the protagonist has to learn, to overcome, to deal with internally in order to solve the problem that the external plot poses. That means that the internal problem predates the events in the plot, often by decades.

WHAT TO DO

this isn’t a process where you first blueprint your entire novel and then write it. Instead, you’ll be writing, and at the same time developing the blueprint for what comes next—whether it’s the very next scene, or scenes that will come into play much farther up the road.

Using the Past to Divine the Future (aka the Plot)

This is not a general struggle, but one based on the protagonist’s impossible goal: to achieve her desire and remain true to the fear that’s keeping her from it.

You’ll begin to build your blueprint based on everything you’ve unearthed in the process thus far.