Storytelling / Narrative

Don't Edit Before You're Done with a Draft

On that note, don't waste time editing ANYTHING -- not even a misspelled word -- until you're done with a full draft.

When I finished the first draft it was about 100,000 words. The first thing I did was go back to the beginning and delete the first 30,000 of them. They were boring and unnecessary but I had... See more

If you’re totally lost on what to focus on getting better at, focus on braiding.

Narrative-style writing (fiction and nonfiction) has four major components:

1. Action: Things happening


2. Dialogue: What people are saying


3. Description: The environment around the people and events


4. Interiority: The characters internal reactions to the place and action

And you co... See more

As a first point, the Hook, we get to know Harry Potter and the story’s context. He lives with his aunt and uncle in a basement. He later discovers that he is a wizard and that his destiny is to go to Hogwarts, the school of magic. This phase is Plot Turn 1, i.e., the first turning point in the plot.

The antagonist begins to be recognized. A troll a... See more

Gladwell: I get attracted to stories that strike me as having potential. Outliers began, for example, with the chapter on the Jewish lawyers. I was talking to someone whose father was one of those lawyers, and she made this observation: “They are all like my dad. They are all from the Bronx, and their parents were all in the garment industry. They ... See more