Jacqui Murray is the author of the popular Building a Midshipman, the story of her daughter’s journey from high school to United States Naval Academy and To Hunt a Sub, her debut fiction. She is the author/editor of over a hundred books on…
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Interview with Jacqui Murray
Tagged with: author interview, Jacqui Murray, non-fiction, novels, research, story structure, To Hunt a Sub, Twenty-four Days
Posted in Author Interviews
Posted in Author Interviews
Interview with Margaret Lesh
Margaret Lesh is the author of the novels Normalish, Mr. Katz is a Zombie, and Finding a Man For Sylvia, as well as her memoir Let Me Get This Off My Chest: A Breast Cancer Survivor Over-Shares. She believes tacos are…
What Do You Do When You Hit a Wall?
If you’ve been writing for any amount of time, it’s happened to you. You’re cranking along, a blissful conduit for the story flowing through you. It’s awesome. It’s the most incredible feeling in the whole world. And then, SCREECH! It…
Tagged with: agency, beta reader, Cathleen Townsend, conflict, protagonist, story stalling, story structure, writing
Posted in Writing
Posted in Writing
Three Act Structure–Third Act
Act three is where your protagonist either succeeds or fails utterly. It should comprise around the last 25% of your book. Right after the second plot point, the dark night of the soul, your protagonist has to devise a new…
Tagged with: act three, Cathleen Townsend, climax, denouement, resolution, story structure, third act
Posted in Writing
Posted in Writing
Three Act Structure–Act Two
Act two is the middle of your story–the largest part, at least 50%. The best description of the second act I’ve ever heard came from one of Brandon Sanderson’s teaching videos on YouTube, which I highly recommend. He said that…
Tagged with: Cathleen Townsend, dark night of the soul, first pinch point, midpoint, plot point number two, second act, second pinch point, story structure, three act structure
Posted in Writing
Posted in Writing
Three Act Structure–Act One: Inciting Incident
So, you’ve got your story idea, and it’s a good one. Now you want to write it up and do it justice. Being smart, you’re going to learn about story structure first, so you don’t write 80,000 words and then…
Tagged with: act one, Cathleen Townsend, inciting incident, story structure, three act structure
Posted in Writing
Posted in Writing
Story Structure–Important for Both Plotters and Discovery Writers
Story structure is incredibly important to your writing. It’s the skeleton on which you hang your entire tale. No matter how lovely your prose, if you aren’t telling a solid tale underneath, most readers will be unhappy with it. They…
Tagged with: Cathleen Townsend, discovery writer, outline, pantser, plotter, story structure, synopsis
Posted in Writing
Posted in Writing
Cathleen Townsend 