Becca Patterson

Tag: plot

  • Breaking the Story

    I’m a pantser when it comes to writing my stories. That is I just write them and figure out all the plot points and such after the fact. This works fairly well for me as my subconscious is much better at storytelling than my conscious mind.

    Most of the time it works out great. Every once in a while it is a disastrous mess.

    Recently I discovered that I had completely missed an important theme in a novel.

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  • The Power of Story

    The Power of Story

    Once upon a time, and not so very long ago, humans relied on stories to make sense of the world. Fairy tales, folk tales, epic poetry, novels, movies and histories in all their forms tell us what to make of the world. We know this, at some instinctive level, so we tell our kids stories to help them learn. We are, to a greater extent, of the impression that we grow out of that.

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  • Two Minds, One Story

    Characters are interesting pieces of your imagination. For many writers they are autonomous being made up of our experiences but different from us in fundamental ways. This at least is my experience, and by anecdotal evidence that of most of the writers I know. You hear it in interviews all the time – authors speak of their characters as though they are living, breathing people. Many of them talk about the characters telling the story and they are just there to write it down.

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  • Time Management Part 2 – The Character

    Last time, I wrote about the problem of Time Management as it applies to writers. Now it’s time to take on the concept from our characters perspective. This is going to be a little bit of mental gymnastics, so I hope you’ll stay with me.

    The concept is simply this – characters have to live full lives too. They will have their goals and their problems that get in the way of achieving those goals every bit as much as we do as writers.

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