Generate More Story Ideas without the Stress: Proven Methods & Why They Work, Part III of III
In the final blog in this series on generating ideas, explore more exercises and tips for tapping into your unconscious and shaking loose story ideas.
In the final blog in this series on generating ideas, explore more exercises and tips for tapping into your unconscious and shaking loose story ideas.
Writers need ideas to write. We explored this concept in the first blog of this series. The final two blogs contain methods to generate ideas.
Your brain needs encouragement to forge connections and form ideas. You can do this by tapping into different methods that foster ideas and imagination. Some ideas come from what you surround yourself with and how you feed your imagination. Others arrive only with a bit of encouragement.
All writers live by the power of their story ideas. How are yours? Do you struggle to come up with ideas? Or do you hit a wall when you try to develop them into something useable?
A treatment is a summary of your script or screenplay idea. They are used for a variety of purposes, but mostly to pitch an idea and approach for a film or video. Writers typically use treatments for corporate work, influencer scripts, YouTubers, documentary films, short runs, and other quick pitches. They are the fastest way to convey your idea for visual or audio formats.
So far in this series, we’ve looked at the difference between a TV Series Pitch Bible and a Series Bible, and how to develop the first of these. Now let’s look at how to expand your initial efforts into a broader, more complete bible to serve as a receptacle for all the details and elements contained within the series.
Learn what to include in your writer’s Series Pitch Bible for television and novels. What to include and why. How to format it and where to find samples. Part II of III.
The final story issue in our series concerns inconsistencies in your story, series, and world. In other words, contradicting facts in your story’s canon.
Identifying and avoiding story-related issues in your writing that weaken the experience and characters. While the following list is not exhaustive, it does reflect some of the most glaring issues facing stories today. Ignore them at your peril. Three are character based and the final issue affects every aspect of story. This is part one of a three-part series. More to come.
There are many ways a plot can go astray, but plot armor, deus ex machina, and plot holes are the most common. So why would you ever want to use these devices? And if you do, how do you use them correctly?
There are many ways a script or novel can go astray. Today, we’re going to review three big plotting issues that face writers: plot armor, deus ex machina, and plot holes. All three fall squarely in the writer’s hands.
In the first part of this series, we looked at the definitions and purposes of concept, premise and story. Now let’s look at how to build a good premise and break down one of the previous examples to see how the author built a stronger story from her concept and premise.
Concept, premise and story are not the same things. Confusing them or using them interchangeably is a common mistake, but one that weakens writing. In this two-part series, we’ll explore what each of these terms means and how to use each technique to build stronger stories.