Writers Tricks of the Trade Issue 6, Volume 6

BUILDING A BELIEVABLE CHAIN OF EVENTS IN YOUR NOVEL JANE FRIEDMAN JANE FRIEDMAN WRITER AND PROFESSOR JANE FRIEDMAN (@JANEFRIEDMAN) HAS MORE THAN 20 YEARS OF EXPERIENCE IN THE PUBLISHING INDUSTRY, WITH EXPERTISE IN DIGITAL MEDIA STRATEGY FOR AUTHORS AND PUBLISHERS. MANY THANKS TO JANE FOR GIVING ME PERMISSION TO PERIODICALLY REPRINT SOME OF HER ARTICLES. YOU CAN READ MORE OF HER WORK AT WWW.JANEFRIEDMAN.COM. SHE HAS SPOKEN ABOUT WRITING, PUBLISHING, AND THE FUTURE OF MEDIA AT MORE THAN 200 EVENTS SINCE 2001, INCLUDING SOUTH BY SOUTHWEST, BOOKEXPO AMERICA, AND THE ASSOCIATION OF WRITERS AND WRITING PROGRAMS. HER ARTICLES AND CREATIVE WORK HAVE APPEARED IN PRESTIGIOUS MAGAZINES LIKE WRITER’S MARKET AND WRITER’S DIGEST.  Jane writes on her blog: This post is an excerpt from Troubleshooting Your Novel by Steven James (@readstevenjames), from Writer’s Digest Books. A game of billiards begins with the cue ball striking the racked balls, which then scatter across the pool table. After that, the players take turns trying to clear the table by pocketing another ball (either stripes or solids), all while keeping the cue ball out of the pockets. We all understand that the game must start somehow. Normally that happens when one player hits that cue ball to break the triangle of racked balls. And from then on, every time a ball hits another, that contact results in an effect. It’s the same with a story. One opening event causes things to splinter apart for the main character in your novel. After that, there’s a chain of events that are all linked and caused by the ones that precede them. A story moves from choice to consequences, from stimulus to response, from cause to effect. This happens on the macro-level, as the results of each scene set the stage for the next, and on the micro-level, as every action and every line of dialogue affects what comes next. NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2016 PAGE 22 WRITERS’ TRICKS OF THE TRADE

Writers Tricks of the Trade Issue 6, Volume 6 | Page 30