Writing

Posted at 9:09AM, Sep. 13, 2007

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One of the elements not discussed much is the writing of comics. We talk about art techniques, but not writing techniques. So this will be my personal ruminations on writing

Posted at 9:09AM, Sep. 13, 2007

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Conflict
I'm always working to improve my writing. I constantly have a problem of a lack of conflict and tension in my stories.
I found this site had a technique that is working for me.
http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/art/snowflake.php
Chapter two of freefall is much more interesting because of it.
What I really enjoyed is the idea of the three stage disaster.

Take another hour and expand that sentence to a full paragraph describing the story setup, major disasters, and ending of the novel. This is the analog of the second stage of the snowflake. I like to structure a story as "three disasters plus an ending". Each of the disasters takes a quarter of the book to develop and the ending takes the final quarter. I don't know if this is the ideal structure, it's just my personal taste.

If you believe in the Three-Act structure, then the first disaster corresponds to the end of Act 1. The second disaster is the mid-point of Act 2. The third disaster is the end of Act 2, and forces Act 3 which wraps things up. It is OK to have the first disaster be caused by external circumstances, but I think that the second and third disasters should be caused by the protagonists's attempts to "fix things". Things just get worse and worse.