#narrative strategies

[mamawasatesttube]

"the bats could take down supers despite the supers being way more powerful than them because they are weak to kryptonite!!!" oh really? mhm, right, that's nice. hey, do you know what the bats are weak to? here is a brief, nonexhaustive list: bullets, bombs, swords, crossbow bolts, arrows, crowbars, bombs, grenades, being slammed into pavement at high velocities, drowning, asphyxiation, and i haven't even gotten into the frost breath, laser eyes, ttk in one case, etc. ...

[books]

Hi! So, I’ve struggled A LOT with this in the past, and I was just wondering what a good way to outline a book was? I understand that there are many different ways to do it, and that it’s different for each person, but it’s hard to find good examples online on the different methods.

When we talk about outlining, we're often talking about structure, even though I think the best outlining also offers some connective tissue between the events of the story and the motivations and consequences of those events. My personal favorite outlining method is what I call a narrative outline, which is kind of like a reverse synopsis. In a narrative outline, you pretend you're explaining your story to someone very invested in it, who wants to know all about it. It's in paragraph form and written in your voice. It can be casual and incomplete. You can fill in the gaps with things like [FIGURE THIS OUT LATER]. Then you can take each paragraph you've written and make it into a chapter.

Sometimes, though, I don't even know enough about what I'm working on to do a narrative outline, and that's when I break out the tried and true four-part structure. This structure has served me well for many years, and even if it doesn't work for you, it's at least a place to start. Long-form stories generally have four major parts: exposition, rising action, climax, and denouement. I like to think of them as buckets in which I toss various scene ideas. The scene where characters A and B meet probably goes in exposition, which is the part concerned with establishing context and leading to an inciting incident. My characters getting to know one another would fall into the rising action bucket. Rising action involves raising stakes and escalating the tension. Then, the climax. This is when the rising action culminates into a major breaking point. Maybe my characters have a fight and break up. And lastly, my denouement, the action that falls in the aftermath of the climax. Here's where my characters, after some time apart, reunite.

Generally speaking, the halfway point of a story parallels the ending. If your halfway point is a major success of some kind, you likely will also have a happy ending. If your halfway point is a failure or a loss, you're probably writing a tragedy. Deciding off the bat, "Will this have a happy ending or a sad one?" will help you start putting events in order. Of course, there are also complicated or bittersweet endings, and those will also be reflected at the halfway point. For a complicated ending, your halfway point may be the most complex part of the book, the point with the least clarity. And a bittersweet ending will have a bittersweet middle.

Other writers have other structures they employ. There's Freytag's pyramid, which is two parts only: rising and falling action. There's the three-act play and the five-act play. There are the six stages and the eight key turning points. I've used all of these just to test them out, but I always end up back at my four parts. The trick to choosing an outlining method or an existing structure is to use it only as a jumping off point. It's a lot easier for me to start writing something knowing my job is just to fill four buckets. Often I end up with five parts instead of four. Don't box yourself in too much; as you begin writing, your story will let you know how it wants to be written. Trust your process and your intuition.

For those just joining us, @bettsfic is running a writing workshop on @books this month. Want to know more? Start here.

[viserya-firstofhername]

Hear me out, I am not saying anything in particular, yet I am saying some matters which I may elaborate upon in times to come.

[forzafinally]

No but seriously Charles wants to win that wdc as a Ferrari driver with the team that most if not all F1 drivers grow up idolising, the team who hasn't won a championship since 2007, the ambition to achieve the impossible again. And I don't think multiple world championships with any other team will be worth half as much to him

[paunchsalazar]

this ruined my life I’m not kidding

[frootbyethefoot]

actually sick to my stomach i love half life so much

[cdroloisms]

some people really convinced everyone that the DreamSMP faction saw L’manburg as a bunch of pathetic puny idiots that couldn’t handle a real fight in the slightest and were no real threat in the revolution only for you to watch the actual DreamSMP side of those events to see these guys overpreparing to hell and talking about L’manburg having “OP gear,” “outnumbering them” and predicting that it’s “likely that they’ll die [during the final control room]” 

[triangle-strategy-notes]

Anna’s reference materials!

A transcript of the longer passages + translation notes under the cut:

Anna was the best from the very beginning ^_^. The clasp was originally intended to be Wolffort's hawk motif, but for narrative reasons, I decided to change it to "a memento from my parents." The silver hair was used to depict the parent-child relationship between her and Benedict. (To eliminate exposition as much as possible . . . ) (Yasuaki Arai)

I initially received the prompt from Mr. Arai, referring to the set of Anna and Milo (from page 50), "Let's have an intense female spy showdown!" So I thought, "In that case, I'll make them opposites, each with their own type of charm to show off!" I aimed for "super stoic vs. super glamorous" and got the OK on my first try. During the design phase, I thought, "I haven't had a chance to draw her, so I'd like to do the drawing when we get to that point!" But my coworker Urushihara liked Anna's design so much that I asked him to finish it. He really put a lot of care into getting the atmosphere of the art just right; when I saw it, I thought, "I'm so glad I asked!" Stoic women who fight are so cool! (Naoki Ikushima)

I finished this based on Mr. Ikushima's rough sketch. At first glance the gender of the character seems ambiguous, but I felt that this gave depth to Anna, who lives in a harsh world where gender isn't a priority. (Tatsuaki Urushihara) 

Translation notes:

“Agent” is a word that’s literally translated as something like “subordinate hand”. In most dictionaries the direct word association is “minion,” “henchman,” or “underling,” but the connotations seemed a little too cartoonishly evil for the general tone that’s usually used in these titles, so “agent” felt like a better fit. It was probably meant to sound more sinister than just “agent,” though, so it was a tradeoff.

The word for “intense” in “Let’s have an intense female showdown” was this one, which can also be translated as “hot,” “ardent,” or “passionate.” The sentence as a whole likely meant to read more like “It would be hot to have a female spy showdown!” but since I wasn’t certain which they meant, I erred on the side of the more mild term.

[blorbocedes]

if that's about m*chael it*liano the conspiracy theories are getting a bit out of hand

my only opinion on mikey italy is that yuki seems to like him and it's important to me yuki has a support system at AT, esp after josh (PR comms) left for ferrari (and the way josh, michael, and yuki all went hiking together in the break??? that's his work buddies fr)

[fogaminghub]

https://www.fogaminghub.com/post/mastering-weasley-burrow-garden-cup-in-harry-potter-quidditch-champions

✨ Jump into the magical world of Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions! 🧙‍♂️💫 Our new blog post explores how to complete your first full match in the Weasley Burrow Garden Cup. Discover essential roles, strategies, and tips for victory! Don't miss out!

[mommytimmy]

what do you mean people can make posts on the internet without knowing anything about what they're talking about? 🤯

[viktortittiforov]

not gonna rb it and start beef i don't have time for that but i just saw a 10k+ notes post compiling tweets/posts about how autism has always been around because [person they know/knew] did some weird shit and "does that seem neurotypical to you" and like. i need you to stop that shit mate of course autism has always been around but not every weird thing people do like e.g. collect elephant statues or have an entire room in their house that's just blue or go on forever about an extremely specific thing is "proof" that person's autistic. this isn't anything against autism, god forbid, but as a neuroqueer person myself classifying every weird behavior as neurodivergence is dangerous. the whole essentialist split between "neurotypical" and "neurodivergent" (which is nowadays sometimes actually synonymous with an apparently essentialist split between "normal" and "weird") is dangerous. let people be weird without imposing a diagnosis on them. you don't have to be a specific type of person to do weird shit. weirdness is not contingent upon your fucking brain physiology or whatever other apparent essence. we all do weird shit at least some of the time and we should do more of it. labelling that as always necessarily a symptom of this or that is not going to encourage more people to be their weirdest selves.

[aqvarius]

i started playing irresistible mistakes again and now that i work as a marketing consultant i can feel myself screaming internally at some of the work problems this mc gets hung up on lmao

[il-predestinato]

.

[wheelercore]

Once one starts to notice the tedkaren subtext it never ends...

[1000punks]

call it divine justice or wtv but i let the absolute pop gorty's brain like a water balloon and let me tell you 😩💦💦💦 h o t

girlboss, honestly

anyway! i'm at 102 hours or so and at the "battle your way up the citadel" portion with the old crew (sorry i'm biased, i love the way astarion, shadowheart and gale work together)

shadowheart as a paladin? gale as a necromancer with mystic carrion's staff? fuggetaboutit

also, i bought the city out of circle of death, dethrone, and disintegrate scrolls (for crowd control!) and i brought as many gunpowder barrels as a paladin and two ranger/rogue/fighters can carry

the best part? the spectator at the top of the citadel didn't even get a chance to attack, and that's great because i hate fighting spectators 🗣️🗣️🗣️