Questions tagged [narrative]
A narrative is an account of events. This tag should be used for anything related to story-telling, including elements and principles or structure.
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How to Write an Involuntary Secret Reveal
I am trying to have my character's secret discovered, they are currently in a hospital, and hiding injuries under their clothes, a couple of which have reopened. They are underaged so they are at ...
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How to plot a memoir?
I have a fair amount of material (incidents, characters, places) that would perhaps amount to a memoir or Bildungsroman. But readers, including myself, seem most attracted to narratives with a plot. ...
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Are there any theories as to what makes a story's premise good or compelling?
John Truby, in Anatomy of Story, says you shouldn't write a story that doesn't have an exciting premise.
But what makes a premise good, bad, boring, compelling, or exciting?
This is what Truby says ...
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How/when do you reveal a big secret to the reader using first person or third person viewpoint?
How and more importantly when do you reveal a major secret about the character?
My character is a mythical species, highly valuable for both intel and magical properties, however she is humanoid and ...
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How do you show the audience that the 3rd person limited narrator is deluded/wrong?
My character's home, both her family and society, are toxic, but in a way that she doesn't realise. They manipulate and essentially brainwash the inhabitants. It's not an evil place just a little ...
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How to make a fiction more visualizable by readers?
I was reading through Agatha Christie's novels and I found that she literally made me visualize everything in the plot.
How does she do that?
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I need help writing a scene or experience about air being knocked out of you
How would you write a scene of someone trying to breath again after getting the wind knocked out of them?
I am trying to describe the experience and how your body reacts physically while your brain ...
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How do I keep a villain's menace after they've suffered so many defeats?
I've noticed in many long-running stories that it's common to have a villain who's a genuine menace to the heroes become impossible to take seriously after they've gotten defeated or died so many ...
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Can I write a story based in a world without humans?
I have this world I'm building that I want to write a story on, but there's absolutely nothing human in the world.
It's entirely built around elemental creatures including the protagonist.
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Language of other countries
I write the little girl calls her grandmother Bunica Rose. The father calls her Bunica Rose also. In the narrative, I use the words, Grandmother Rose. Is this appropriate to do?Will my reading get ...
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Should I flesh out the start of my fictional story?
The plot I’m thinking of goes from very normal, with fleshed out characters, to surreal towards the end. I want to wrap it around to have strange foreshadowing at the very beginning of the book to ...
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How to include multiple rare events in a story without it feeling contrived?
I'm working on a detailed plot outline for a fantasy story that revolves around three main characters, Liana, Celia, and Ander. Here's a brief overview:
Celia suffers from a condition called "...
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How to pad the pages in a murder mystery
I have arrived at a plot point that I would rather be later. If one were to say that a page is 250 words, then the murderer has scapegoated someone else at page 8. As far as I can recall, Agatha ...
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What if the narrator forgets the names of the characters?
My writing project involves flashbacks and explanations that may already be hard to follow to the reader. But the most important point in it, is that in the end, no one remembers what ever happened. ...
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How do I maintain interesting prose outside of the introduction/hook when I start getting into my anecdotes?
This is a personal narrative where I want to narrate my creative side. I start off strong with figurative language, descriptions, and metaphors. But as I get into my anecdote and what I learned from ...
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