Nearly every day, I hear from writers who are struggling to finish their stories. They tell me they have great ideas, have already finished a few chapters of their book, but they just can’t summon the motivation to finish.
I’ve been thinking today about what makes a setting like Hogwarts so great.
We’ve all spent a lot of time at school, many years of our lives. School is familiar, relatable, “homey.”
Thus it makes perfect sense to set a young adult novel series in a school. And many writers have done this, not just J.K. Rowling.
Good stories are made up of moments: good moments, bad moments, but most of all, life changing moments.
A writer’s job is choose the best, most essential moments in a character’s life and throw the rest out.
You’ve been told your story needs conflict. You’ve been told that each scene needs to have tension. You might have even been told you need to be writing villains, memorable antagonists that can supercharge your plot.
But unless you’re writing a fantasy novel, you might not be sure how to do this. You associate villains with Darth Vader and Jafar from Alladin.
What do bad guys look like in realistic literature?
On Saturday, April 11 at 6:49 am, my wife gave birth to our second son, Remington Seth Eugene Bunting—or Remy.
