“Once Upon a Time.”
These words are as familiar as ‘Hello.’ As soon as we hear them, we know we are about to be transported to a different world.
But why is that? Why have these words been so ingrained into our very being?
Often in stories, the protagonist has a support system (unless your novel takes place on a deserted island and the protagonist is the lone survivor of a terrible plane crash, in which case a volleyball named Wilson will just have to do). These characters can take the form of friends, family, coworkers, roommates, or any other number of relationships, but often they fulfill the role of the sidekick.
Sometimes when you’re writing, you get so caught up in where your story is going that you’ve forgotten a few details that you previously established at the beginning of your book.
Sometimes those details are smaller, like having a character approach your protagonist from behind when you’ve established that the protagonist is on the top row of the stadium bleachers, and there is no way you can sneak up on them from behind. Sometimes those details are bigger, like a previously-unbeatable monster suddenly being dispatched with ease with a butter knife.
These inconsistencies are called plot holes.
Every character needs a memorable name. Your character could have the most interesting personality, the most incredible predicament, and could be forgotten if his name is Bob Smith. You need the perfect mixture of unique and believable.
No ideas? That’s okay. Here are five ways to pick out the perfect name.
Foreshadowing is common enough in storytelling: the burning scar of Harry Potter, Peeta Mellark’s ability to frost cakes, all the hand motifs in Arrested Development, everything in LOST. A well-placed note of foreshadowing can come back to the reader as a smack on the head or a revelatory twist ending. One of the most well-known foreshadowing techniques gets its name from the playwright Anton Chekhov. He famously said that if there is a rifle onstage in the first act, then it absolutely must go off in the second or third act. If it’s not going to go off, it’s got no business being present.
This object, skill, or other source of foreshadowing is referred to as Chekhov’s gun.
Many of our favorite stories have an item that our heroes are attempting to retrieve. Sometimes that item has significance to the plot, like in Raiders of the Lost Ark, where the titular lost ark ends up getting Indiana Jones out of a precarious situation. And sometimes the item is just an item that the heroes need to find because, well, something needs to run the plot of this thing.
In that case, the item is called a MacGuffin.
