FROM THE VAULTS: WEEK 3, ACT 3

by | Aug 28, 2018 | Podcast

For obvious reasons, I won’t be referencing The Hand of Adonai and the Book of Things to Come for this post. The final installment of our look at the three act structure will be a bit shorter. Why? Because Act III is generally the shortest. If you recall, Act I...

GROSS ANATOMY OF A NOVEL: DIALOG

by | Aug 22, 2018 | Podcast

Firsts in Fiction Gross Anatomy of a Novel: Dialog What is dialog? “Dialogue is not a break in the action. It’s an intensification of the action. Here’s something else dialogue is not: It’s not the way we speak. Dialogue must appear realistic without being realistic....

FROM THE VAULTS: WEEK 2, ACT 2

by | Aug 14, 2018 | Podcast

Last week, I began a three-week series on the three act structure. Most commonly used for screenplays, novelists have long borrowed the basic structure to help outline novels. Bottom line, the three-act structure is a proven story-telling technique. This week, we’ll...

GROSS ANATOMY OF A NOVEL: PLOT AND STRUCTURE

by | Aug 8, 2018 | Podcast

Firsts in Fiction Gross Anatomy of a Novel: Plot, Pacing, Structure First, what do we mean when we talk about plot? Plot refers to the course of events in a novel. Typically, this also refers to the order in which they occur. A lot of times this is what we describe on...