Longman Guide to Intermediate and Advanced Fiction Writing Book

Connecting character to story: "what action or event could most test this person's particular personality"
A story will be more complicated if a readers hopes and fears for the character are not identical to the characters' hopes and fears for themselves
Characters may support or defeat each other, may have conflicting needs or complementary needs, world views, desires'or may illuminate each other through their interactions
When examining our own stories for interactions of characters'look at what their effect their personalities and actions have on others'complicate them and find ways in which they overlap
Counterpointed example: he find her attractive, she finds him disgusting
"In revision, we have several ways to address the lethargy that passive main characters can bring to a story. Perhaps the character needs to have more responsibility or to make a mistake that has dramatic consequences. Or maybe the character's failure to stand up for his or her desires can have consequences, which then force the character to engage in dramatic actions to compensate. Hamlet is perhaps the most famous example of disasters caused by failure to act."
Humanize through weakness, villains who cause damage because they are damaged, villains intend harm, heros do good.
Use character to complicate what we already know'how they motivate, hold back, what they want and how their own character stops them from getting it. Let them be their own people.

Basic Plot:
Ground Situation
Complication or inception
Rising action increases tension
Crisis, tension hits highest point
Climax, perform the most significant actions of the story in response to peak tensions, lives changed
Falling action, response to changes

Drive: Something meaningful must be at stake
It is human nature to route for the underdog
Actual plot vs. emotion plot.
Emotion is like, people who question their lives' purposes, so if they have sacrificed everything for others, was it worth it if those others leave them?

Other structures'nonlinear'rely on building and creating meaning. Look at how the images change through what they represent or how the characters change


Scene lives in the moment
Change in scene can occur in surface events and relations or in subtext
To push our limits, we change our usual balance'talk more, talk less, lush sense of the physical world by adding description that enhances character or tone'deepen fiction through the heart of the story
An effective summary can set up or ask questions, introduce a mystery or move us gracefully through hours or years when nothing much is happening to our characters. Summary should be as fascinating as scene
Once drafted, review for details, surprising observations, subtle continuation of story's purposes

Situational'what happens Psychological is human drama, greed or love or other struggles
Use details to drive home the point

Nonrealistic fiction needs to be memorable, but have something to do with the real struggles of live, but needs to convey the strangeness of the fictional world

This is the hardest thing:
Firm sense of the legitimacy of our own work and impulses

Welty: Feelings are bound up in place

Invent secrets. Create a scene'action, dialogue, descriptive details, in which one character communicates the secret to the other without direct discussion

Opening of a story teaches us to interpret the story