The 9 Types Of Unreliable Narrator, by Amanda Patterson
From: https://writerswrite.co.za/9-types-of-unreliable-narrator I was stunned by the success of Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. It was obvious to me that the author was employing the unreliable narrator technique in the story. This came as a shock to many readers and viewers, which is odd when everyone tells you that there are at least two sides to every story. There is a long history of unreliable narrators in fiction. There is an even longer list in… Read More
Truth and lies in fiction—how to write an unreliable narrator, by Arlene Prunkl
From: http://penultimateword.com/book-marketing/how-to-write-unreliable-narrator I’m excited about this blog post. While most of my articles are on common topics that you can find information about all around the Internet, the subject of unreliable narrators doesn’t get a lot of ink. And that’s probably because relatively few fiction writers know about the literary device of unreliable narration, and if they do, they haven’t any notion of how to create it or use it to best effect. Recently,… Read More
8 Tips to Writing Unreliable Narrators, by Deb Caletti
From: http://www.writersdigest.com/online-editor/8-tips-to-writing-unreliable-narrators The unreliable narrator … Ah, don’t you love that unsettling, page-turning, blockbuster-making literary device? An unreliable narrator makes for the bad boy of novels—ensuring a delicious but uneasy read, an on-the-edge wondering of what might happen next. Usually, we feel we’re in good hands with whatever main characters we’re spending time with between the covers. We can count on them, we think, to tell us the truth. But then comes a… Read More
Interior Monologue, by Richard Nordquist
From: https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-an-interior-monologue-1691073, by Richard Nordquist DEFINITION In both fiction and nonfiction, an interior monologue is the expression of a character‘s thoughts, feelings, and impressions in a narrative. An interior monologue may be either direct or indirect: direct, in which the author seems not to exist and the interior self of the character is given directly, as though the reader were overhearing an articulation of the stream of thought and feeling flowing through the character’s mind; indirect, in which the author serves as selector,… Read More
Inner monologue examples: Writing characters’ secret lives
From: https://www.nownovel.com/blog/inner-monologue-examples-in-novels Internal or inner monologue is a useful literary device. Dialogue reveals character relationships, their converging or competing goals. Inner monologue gives readers an x-ray view of characters’ more private feelings and dilemmas. Read examples of inner monologue that illustrate how to use it well, along with tips: First, what is ‘inner monologue’? A ‘monologue’ literally means ‘speaking alone’, if we go back to the word’s roots. In a play, especially in Shakespeare,… Read More
The Complete Guide to Interior Monologue
From: https://www.novel-writing-help.com/interior-monologue.html Interior monologue is the fancy literary term for a character’s thoughts in a novel. In real life, the stream of thoughts we all have running through our heads at any given moment is more often called internal monologue, though the two terms mean precisely the same thing. While we’re dealing with definitions, a couple of closely-related literary terms are… Stream of Consciousness. This is where an entire novel, or at least large chunks… Read More
The Essential Ingredient of Hard Choices, by Chuck Wendig
N.B. This is a sanitized version of the essay by Chuck Wendig; please see the original for the more colorful Wendig. From: http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2017/11/07/the-essential-ingredient-of-hard-choices I knew a guy named Gil who faced an incredibly difficult decision: his wife and his teenage daughter were both in the hospital at the same time with failing kidneys, the wife from cancer, the daughter from the trauma of a car accident. Grim coincidence, indeed. Both required a kidney… Read More
The Key Ingredient for Dramatic Tension–Understanding the Antagonist, by Kristen Lamb
By Author Kristen Lamb, posted in Antagonist on April 23, 2012 From: https://warriorwriters.wordpress.com/tag/role-of-the-antagonist Today I wanted to take some time to talk about the antagonist. Why? Well, not only is the antagonist THE most important character, but he is the most misunderstood as well. […] Whenever I blog about the antagonist, I generally get one of the following: “Well, my character is the antagonist. She is her own worst enemy.” “What if… Read More
Storytelling Strategies: Spotlighting Inner Conflict, by Paul Joseph Gulino
January 25, 2016 From: http://www.scriptmag.com/features/storytelling-strategies-spotlighting-inner-conflict Do your characters need an arc or inner conflict to make a screenplay work? Spotlight (written by Josh Singer and Tom McCarthy and directed by McCarthy) has been nominated for a slew of awards, including Oscars in Best Picture and Best Writing categories. The obvious reason for the attention is that it is a polished, well-crafted, and engaging film. Very likely, another reason is the subject matter:… Read More
Levels of Conflict, by John Vorhaus
From: http://writerunboxed.com/2013/07/25/levels-of-conflict By John Vorhaus on Jul 25 2013 at WriterUnboxed.com Whenever I have a problem I can’t solve, I immediately try to break it down into smaller, component problems. And I keep breaking problems down until I find one small enough to solve. This is a strategy I use over and over again when trying to get to the heart of the conflict of a story or scene I’m writing. For… Read More