Rick Duchalski

Someone once said that building a story is basically like chasing your main character up a tree, throwing rocks at them, then chasing them down again. What they mean is that the beginning part (other than getting to know the character) is where you first give them their big problem to solve. Mulan’s dad being…

Okay. So, we’ve covered the first two things that a good beginning gives us: a sense of who the main character is (and how they handle things, normally), and a sense of the problem they will need to solve. The third thing a good beginning gives is related to the first thing. It’s a picture…

In the last post, I said that a good beginning does three things for our story. The first was that it gives us a sense of how our main character tends to react to things. We get some information about them. So now, here’s the second thing a good beginning does for our story. Readers…

So, what about the first part of a story, the beginning? What job does it do? Can’t we just jump right into the big problem and go from there? Should Voldemort just knock on the door right away? Or better, why don’t stories do that? Why do they often have some kind of warm-up, before…

This post is a little more advanced, so if you’re at an earlier stage of your writing career, work through some of the earlier posts about structure and drama, then come right back here! So, in the beginning of the story, your character wants something. In the middle of the story, there is a whole…

To recap: A story has a beginning, middle, and end. A story is dramatic (i.e., something happens and we want to know what comes next). Drama comes from conflict. Conflict happens when two forces are pushing against each other, and only one can win. Your protagonist doesn’t always have to win every fight. In fact,…

In the last post, we talked about all the different problems you could throw at a main character to keep them busy. And we even looked at the long list of problems that Mulan gets thrown at her over the course of the (animated) movie. But here’s the thing: If you go back to that…

In the last post, we talked about all the cool drama stuff that happens before your main character solves a problem. You know, while she’s figuring out what to do. At some point, though, she really does have to make a decision. She does have to try a solution. But that doesn’t mean the excitement…

So far, we’ve talked about drama, which comes from conflict. And that conflict happens when your main character is faced with a problem. But here’s the thing: the drama, the exciting part, doesn’t happen when she solves the problem and gets what she wants. That’s the end of the drama. The exciting part is all…

Just so we’re all on the same page of the cool, new notebook we bought from the dollar store, here are some words that will come up again and again: The “protagonist” is just your main character. The “antagonist” is the one that causes problems. So, the antagonist is the person or force that is…