Hard to believe we’re into the last 1/4 of 2022, its been a something of a past couple of years and while not without their positives I feel like the past few years many will be glad to be past.
Things of interest this month:
Along with having to work hard to interpret good advice, sometimes the advice we receive isn’t actually that good. The strangest piece of advice I ever saw attempted was someone said to put exposition at the very start of a story because that’s when the audience’s disbelief was most suspended. Not only was that contrary to almost all common writing advice out there I’m not sure the basis for the advice was correct either. I suppose it’s correct that at the beginning of a story a reader’s ‘blank slate’ is the most blank but I’m not sure that equates to suspension of disbelief.
Hard to believe we’re into the last 1/4 of 2022, its been a something of a past couple of years and while not without their positives I feel like the past few years many will be glad to be past.
Things of interest this month:
This is a really interesting one. Its a common misconception that the key to a good story is unpredictability and “not knowing what will happen” which is a key of whodunnit mysteries but funnily enough people enjoy stories well enough even if they have read/seen them before and even if they’ve been spoiled [citation needed].
Though it does raise the question: what is the point to a prequel? The obvious shallow answer is cashing in on a popular franchise – however from a story point of view there are many possible answers. In my opinion the biggest mistake of prequel writing is trying to capture all the possibilities rather than having a single strong theme. (this sounds like a whole blog post to itself – I’ll keep you posted)
I find these threads really interesting to read – although for some reason I never feel much able to contribute I suspect I don’t tend to compare characters across different works only within…
That will do for this week – hope everyone is well and taking care.
Lonely Power Poles 