Author: Colin Klawans

Writer Extraordinaire

Discontinuity and Narrative Errors

Your story should be an understandable sequence of events which taken consecutively will lead into one another with factual consistency. This lets your audience digest the information in a familiar manner which makes logical sense. Without this sinew the audience can’t discern what just happened or if what just happened actually happened or matters. Then … Continue reading Discontinuity and Narrative Errors →

What to Keep When You Cut

It’s extremely difficult to ascertain this information from reading a book because it’ll be blended into the finished story. It’s also a crushing blow to the junior writer when they fall into this invisible pitfall only realized long after the cuts are made. Then they have to scour distant memories for the little bits they … Continue reading What to Keep When You Cut →

Freytag’s Pyramid vs Story Arcs

Choose your character! That’s part of it yes but including either of these structures into your story can be a useful tool for organizing plots. Order and familiarity help ground the audience’s expectations while giving the writer the means to subvert, confirm, or reject those expectations. You can’t pull the rug out from someone if … Continue reading Freytag’s Pyramid vs Story Arcs →

Crafting an Interesting Character

Let’s start with the most interesting person I know as a template — myself. We join our protagonist sitting on a towel draped chair staring at a Word document so bereft of text the whiteness has scarred his eyes with black and purple worms wriggling left, always left. Twenty minutes later, nothing has changed. Maybe … Continue reading Crafting an Interesting Character →

Finding the Theme of Your Story

In short, just keep writing. In elaboration, if you began your story without its theme in mind then you’re going to find it as you’re writing the story. By adding characters with unique points of view and putting them in challenging situations in an environment which shapes them, you ask yourself – and your audience … Continue reading Finding the Theme of Your Story →

Unplanned Plant and Payoff

Adding new elements, characters, and plot lines are vital to push a story along and keep it fresh. However, the further into the story you are the more problematic these can be. Introducing a new character in the third act doesn’t leave much room to get across their backstory, personality, plot relevance, connections to the … Continue reading Unplanned Plant and Payoff →