A few years ago, I had some extra time one month so I started a weekly Twitter conversation that I called—for no particular reason—#editingchat. It was just a bunch of us who got together every week to talk about certain issues I see a lot in my editing work.
And it evolved almost instantly into an ad-hoc demonstration on how to develop a story from an idea.
This, it turned out, was what people really wanted to know: how do you move from a great idea to a great story?
It was so exciting that the conversation went like fire, week by week, through each idea along the basic elements of story design: character needs, tension in conflict, to The Whole Point, i.e. the Climax. Plus some talk about the current publishing industry, genre vs. literary fiction, self-publishing vs. traditional publishing, and the question, “How much does quality mean to us?”
I’d have kept it up, but I after awhile I was exhausted.
So today I’m sending you all into the Archives to learn how we did it:
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What an editor does: hosted by Ollin Morales
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The quality debate, plus live demonstration of story development
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Full demonstration of story development: conflicting needs aimed at Climax
REMEMBER: on Twitter conversations, you read from the bottom up.
Otherwise, you’ll learn how to do it all backward.
“The freshest and
most relevant advice
you’ll find.”
—Helen Gallagher,
Seattle P-I
The Art & Craft of Story