by Angela Ruth Strong, @AngelaRStrong There’s a scene in The A-Team where the guys are inside a tank that’s parachuting from an airplane, and they fire a cannon to push …
Stir The Pot
by Dalyn Weller, @dalynweller As an author you have an obligation to stir up trouble. Don’t get too excited, I mean you’re obligated to create conflict for your characters. A compelling …
NaNoWriMo Help: What to do when your brain is tangled…
It’s day 5. Is your brain tangled yet? If you’re not trying to write a book in a month, then disregard the above sentence. Because hopefully your brain IS NOT …
Step-by-Step: Storycrafting Process
My brother ran a ½ marathon last weekend. For him, this is a regular occurrence – he has a wall full of finisher medals from marathons and iron man competitions …
Extreme Book Makeover: Help Me Hook My Reader: Starting on the RUN!
I watched the Oscars last night. (Best. Oscars. Ever. #OscarTwitterPic #PizzaDelivery)
I’d only seen one of the movies in the Best Picture category – Gravity. In fact, I saw it this weekend, in our home theater, where I think I only breathed twice in an hour. Terrifying, in a non-horror-film, wow-I-never-want-to-be-there way.
The story, in a nutshell, is about a scientist who is working on the space shuttle – specifically OUTSIDE the shuttle in a spacewalk – when, due to a crazy set of circumstances — she gets untethered and thrown into space. Her quest is to somehow get back to earth.
It’s an amazing movie – the special effects will blow your mind.
And, it’s a great example of starting a movie with just the right amount of PIPE.
Pipe is the distance between the first sentence and the Noble Quest. As an author, you’re opening the faucet of your story, and the pipe is how long it takes for it to start spilling out. The shorter the pipe, the sooner your reader receives the benefit of the story.
However, many authors suffer from Too Much Pipe Syndrome, or the belief that they must tell their reader everything about their main character before the story starts for the reader to enjoy the story. Another way to put it is they start their story way too early.