When I decided to take writing seriously, I did a lot of reading and analyzing of the books I liked, and came up with what I thought were pretty sound plotting and structure basics.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I wrote two plotted books, got some of the fundamentals of storytelling down, then... it's sort of like taking the training wheels off, trying to write a book that's fun in the same way without relying on quite such mechanical or external beats.
I always have a basic plot outline, but I like to leave some things to be decided while I write.
I began to be impressed by what made a good book-how you needed to have a sensible story, a plot that developed, with a beginning, a middle, and an end that would tie everything together.
My books are primarily plot driven but the best plot in the world is useless if you don't populate them with characters that readers can care about.
Everything that you read is an influence on everything you write, and you want to draw as many elements into your work as you can.
I always work from an outline, so I know all the of the broad events and some of the finer details before I begin writing the book.
I'm certainly a plot and character man. Themes, structure, style - they're valid components of a novel and you can't complete the book without them. But I think what propels me as a reader is plot and character.
I am not an analytical writer. Once I flesh out my characters and decide on the elements of my plot, the story unfolds in my head almost as though it was a movie reel.
I jump around in the plotting stage, where I basically just make a bulleted list of every damn thing that happens in the entire book.
As an author, you think you know where the good parts and the bad parts are. And then you read to a group of children, and you learn when you're boring them, and you hurry through those sections to get to the parts where they're interested again. You start to get a sense of your story's rhythm and flow.
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