Essentials / Discovering Your Plot / 4:41

 

Every plot has a beginning / middle / end. Tensions and suspense drive each of these sections.

Plotting prose? Poetry? That choice doesn’t matter in narrative. Telling a story is the focus, and all stories are formed through a series of scenes and sequels, which bridge between scenes.

Two things control the main plot and each subplot. These are the heart and the brain that will drive every scene and its sequel. The heart is the theme which is the key to unlock the brain, our conflict that controls the plot.

These are the four plotting essentials. Theme. Conflict. Scene. Sequel.

Timing

• 00:00 Welcome
• 00:40 Opening Words
• 01:31 Theme
• 06:32 Conflict
• 12:36 Scene & Sequel
• 20:00 Last Words and Closing

Link to Dwight Swain’s Techniques of the Selling Writer https://www.amazon.com/Techniques-Selling-Writer-Dwight-Swain/dp/0806111917/

Link to Think like a Pro: 7 Lessons for Writers by the host M.A. Lee https://books2read.com/u/4AxWAd or

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07DYJDY5S/    

Links to the Ebook Discovering Your Plot

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0838PTN49

https://books2read.com/u/bOJK6K

Links to a paperback 8 x 10 bundle for plot / characters / branding / sentence craft, called Discovering Your Writing https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08691892S

Trailer https://youtu.be/hTVQn92kNBk

 

Thanks for listening to The Write Focus. We focus on productivity, process, craft, and tools. Our podcast is for newbies who want to become writing pros and veterans who are returning to writing after years away.

Our current focus is Discovering Your Plot, from host M.A. Lee’s guidebook of the same name.

Support the podcast with a cup of coffee at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/winkbooksr

• You can find workbooks and templates at Buy Me a Coffee. Available is the Enter the Writing Business Workbook and templates from the Discovering Characters
• Available Now: worksheet templates and a video trailer script for Discovering Your Author Brand.

For more links and resources, visit www.thewritefocus.blogspot.com  .

Write to us at winkbooks@aol.com.

If you find value in this podcast, please share with your writing friends or write a review. (We’re small beans. We don’t have the advertising budget of the big peeps. You can make a difference.)

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Here are the easiest. Make us a favorite, and follow along easy-peasy, once a week, while you fix a quick dinner, drive a short commute, or take a brisk walk.

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Hate and Love with Genre Tropes / Discovering Plot / 4:40

 

Hate and Love with Genre Tropes

Tropes are those genre category-specific details, characters, and events that readers relish and anticipate: a magic sword, the hard-nosed detective who drinks on the job, and the corpse found and lost in a cozy mystery. Some tropes—such as the Golden Child—transcend a single genre and can be found in all major genres.

Genre tropes can build a plot, but tropes are not plot. They are tools. Not every screwdriver in your tool box is used every time you need to screw in a screw. If you do use every tropes to build a plot, well, as a writer, you are S.C.R.E.W.E.D.

I won’t list genre tropes in this episode. Those are easy to find. I will explain the reason we writers are screwed when we depend on tropes for our plot and characters.

Yet we can use tropes ... just don't let them use you!

TIMINGS

• 00:00 Welcome
  
• 00:39 Opening Words
• 01:54 Genre Tropes
• 03:31 Folk Ballad Tropes
• 06:08 Commedia dell’ Arte Tropes
• 08:05 Epic Hero Tropes
• 12:13 Writing Fast with Stock Spinners / Story Wheels
• 15:24 Pulp Writers and Preventing Trope Repetition
• 17:48 Last Words
• 18:31 Closing

Total Run Time: 19:31

LINKS

Karen Woodward: “NaNoWriMo, Erle Stanley Gardner, Perry Mason, and Plot Wheels” – https://blog.karenwoodward.org/2013/10/nanowrimo-erle-stanley-gardner-perry-mason-plot-wheels.html 

Lester Dent’s Plot Formula, as a pdf, is at multiple places on the Internet.

Thanks for listening to The Write Focus. We focus on productivity, process, craft, and tools. Our podcast is for newbies who want to become writing pros and veterans who are returning to writing after years away.

Our current focus is Discovering Your Plot, from host M.A. Lee’s guidebook of the same name.

Support the podcast with a cup of coffee at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/winkbooksr

• You can find workbooks and templates at Buy Me a Coffee. Available is the Enter the Writing Business Workbook and templates from the Discovering Characters
• Available Now: worksheet templates and a video trailer script for Discovering Your Author Brand.

For more links and resources, visit www.thewritefocus.blogspot.com  .

Write to us at winkbooks@aol.com.

If you find value in this podcast, please share with your writing friends or write a review. (We’re small beans. We don’t have the advertising budget of the big peeps. You can make a difference.)

Links to the Ebook

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0838PTN49

https://books2read.com/u/bOJK6K

Links to a paperback 8 x 10 bundle for plot / characters / branding / sentence craft, called Discovering Your Writing https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08691892S

Trailer https://youtu.be/hTVQn92kNBk

Genre Expectations ~ Plot / What Writers Want and Need to Know

 Genre Expectations

Genre expectations are reader expectations of the plot they will encounter. With all the books on the electronic and physical shelves, a classification system more than Fiction and NonFiction is necessary.

Here comes Genre to save the day, like the famed Mighty Mouse.

We have 10 major genres of fiction and countless subgenres within each category—and then we have stories that fuse genres or bend the genre boundaries.

As long as we writers interest, amuse, or instruct our readers, that’s all that matters.

Timings

• 00:00 Welcome
• 00:39 Opening Words
• 01:23 Genre Expectations
• 4:02 Major Genres of Literature
• 09:33 All Genres and the 1^st 4
• 12:18 The Last 6 of the 10
• 17:05 Closing

Total Run Time 18:06

Thanks for listening to The Write Focus. We focus on productivity, process, craft, and tools. Our podcast is for newbies who want to become writing pros and veterans who are returning to writing after years away.

Our current focus is Discovering Your Plot, from host M.A. Lee’s guidebook of the same name.

Support the podcast with a cup of coffee at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/winkbooksr

• You can find workbooks and templates at Buy Me a Coffee. Available is the Enter the Writing Business Workbook and templates from the Discovering Characters
• Available Now: worksheet templates and a video trailer script for Discovering Your Author Brand.

For more links and resources, see below or visit www.thewritefocus.blogspot.com  .

Write to us at winkbooks@aol.com.

If you find value in this podcast, please share with your writing friends or write a review. (We’re small beans. We don’t have the advertising budget of the big peeps. You can make a difference.)

LINKS

Ebook

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0838PTN49

https://books2read.com/u/bOJK6K

Links to a paperback 8 x 10 bundle for plot / characters / branding / sentence craft, called Discovering Your Writing https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08691892S

Trailer https://youtu.be/hTVQn92kNBk

 

New Series! Discovering Plot ~ All Writers Want and Need to Know

 Based on M.A. Lee's guidebook Discovering Your Plot

What do writers want to know about plot? What do writers need to know about plot?

The Write Focus takes a comprehensive view of plot in the series Discovering Your Plot. Genre expectations, major story structures, pacing / tension / suspense ~ we cover it all.

Today, we look at writers’ wants and needs as well as story basics and story length.

TIMINGS

00:00 Welcome

00:39 Start

01:23 Introduction

04:33 What is Story?

08:40 Story Length

14:08 Projecting MS Length

18:00 Closing

Total Run Time 19:01

Links to the Ebook

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0838PTN49

https://books2read.com/u/bOJK6K

Links to a paperback 8 x 10 bundle for plot / characters / branding / sentence craft, called Discovering Your Writing https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08691892S

Trailer https://youtu.be/hTVQn92kNBk

Thanks for listening to The Write Focus. 

We focus on productivity, process, craft, and tools. Our podcast is for newbies who want to become writing pros and veterans who are returning to writing after years away.

Our current focus is Discovering Your Plot, from host M.A. Lee’s guidebook of the same name.

Support the podcast with a cup of coffee at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/winkbooksr

·        You can find workbooks and templates at Buy Me a Coffee. Just up is the Enter the Writing Business Workbook and templates from the Discovering Characters series.

·        Available Now: worksheet templates and a video trailer script for Discovering Your Author Brand.

For more links and resources, visit www.thewritefocus.blogspot.com  .

Write to us at winkbooks@aol.com.

If you find value in this podcast, please share with your writing friends or write a review. (We’re small beans. We don’t have the advertising budget of the big peeps. You can make a difference.)