Saturday, April 16, 2011

What's Up the Street For Next Week?

Conflict happens everywhere - and no week is more apparent of that than this one, when violent storms are crashing throughout the U.S.
My heart goes out to all those affected, or who may be affected by this difficulty.

As writers, we learn that conflict is the heart of a good story.
Necessary.
Uprooting our characters and sending them to a new place.
Real life examples give us fuel for our fictional worlds.

Not that I want to cause any conflict here on the Alley.

But in books?

Ah. Now there’s a different story J

Without conflict there is no story. The gathering storm. The foreboding discovery. The unsolved mystery. The unrequited love.
No conflict - NO STORY
Examples?
No big bad wolf – no story

No wicked step-mother – no story
No Civil War and selfish, green-eyed beauty – no story
(Aren't my boys to the right so cute ;-) No conflict in my home.)

And the conflict has to last throughout the ENTIRE book – so hit the poor hero/heroine HARD J

So What’s up the Street This Week on The Alley?
On Monday, Angie is talking about the calling to write. Inspired by Priscilla Shirer, Angie posts about Anointed By God to Write.

Can we learn by fixing others’ writing? Well, on Tuesday Julia posts about shaping our own writing by critiquing others.

On Wednesday,  Sarah has another one of her fabulous self-editing posts on the way.

On Thursday, Wendy will share her writing insights with you.

On Friday, Cindy finishes off the week with a focus on plot and characters in Scoring a Well-Rounded Manuscript.

Alright - here are a few helpful links if you want some ways to ramp up the tension in your story.

Conflict Generator - http://futureisfiction.com/plotpoint/index.cgi

Nice article on Conflict and types - http://www.plotcafe.com/conflict-in-fiction-writing/

Article from Seekerville on Ramping Up the Tension - http://seekerville.blogspot.com/2011/01/writers-ramp-that-tension-and-win-book.html

What's some of the best conflict you've read recently in books? Or have you written some pretty good conflict? Wanna share?


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1 comment:

Casey said...

Conflict! Ack, love it in books... hate it in real life.

But then there would be no inspiration for our fiction...