Action Category
Emotions Should Lead to Decisions
Posted on July 20, 2012 1 Comment
Here’s a tidbit from the Bookshelf Muse, which I came across this week: Emotions should lead to decisions. Angela Ackerman writes, “Always keep the story moving forward. A character agonizing over a choice will crank up the tension and heighten stakes, but too much will slow the pace. Remember too, often when emotion is involved, […]
What’s the Situation?
Posted on June 20, 2012 2 Comments
I have a couple of short stories stories I’m working on that don’t seem to be going anywhere. I took a break from spinning my wheels the other day and came across a little section titled “Situation” in the book Creating Short Fiction, by Damon Knight. He writes, “A dramatic situation is unstable—you know it […]
A Character Is What She Does
Posted on May 25, 2012 Leave a Comment
In Ron Carlson Writes a Story, Carlson says, “A character is what he or she does.” He writes, “Action is narrative evidence. It proves as it goes, whereas adjectival telling (she was careless, manipulative, compulsive, willful) alerts us to how a character might be, but doesn’t prove it with the force good drama requires.” This […]
Tracy Staedter 