Small Stakes vs. Large Stakes
The High Stakes Fallacy, whereby big, impersonal stakes are thought to be enough for a story, is an easy trap to fall into.
The High Stakes Fallacy, whereby big, impersonal stakes are thought to be enough for a story, is an easy trap to fall into.
Stories are about struggle. This concept is easy to understand yet can be hard to implement. I take a look at why.
In my second post in this “Opposites” series, I look at more examples of the opposing dynamics in the Blake Snyder Beat Sheet.
Good story structure boils down to a series of opposites, or dichotomies. One of the most important of these is the opening image and final image in a story.
Neil Gaiman’s beautiful words on books, stories, and speculative fiction are worth reading.
Last week I dove into Ray Bradbury’s thoughts on the art of writing science fiction. This week, I take a look at the thoughts of Ursula K. Le Guin.
In The Paris Review, sci-fi author Ray Bradbury discusses the art of writing science fiction.
The Golden Age of magazine science fiction offered us some great stories, but also some very confusing ones, which got me thinking about our different styles of writing.
Thinking about science fiction got me thinking about storytelling in general. So I went back to the original guide on storytelling, Aristotle’s Poetics.
The novella “No Woman Born” shows us that a science fiction story can have an incredibly low amount of action while still being incredibly compelling.