Tag Archives: developing writing

The Prophecy Resources Page

Posted by Pip Hunn on May 26, 2010 Comments Off

Hi! Welcome to the Prophecies Page. If you’ve come here independently, I’ve written two articles that can get you started.

The first one, The Problem With Prophecies, looks at the particular problems that plague prophecies, especially in the realm of Fantasy fiction. Getting an understanding of these is going to help you make the same errors that other authors have, and ensure your work is of superior quality.

Then we’ve got Doing It Properly, which discusses some intelligent approaches to prophecy in writing.

Below, I’ve listed a handy set of 80 Questions Of Awesomeness for you to answer. Some of them could be reduced to a ‘Yes/No’ response, but I encourage you to give them a little more thought than that. Even to yourself, a one-sentence justification will give you more colour and depth to enjoy.

Remember:
Ask yourself ‘why?’ about everything to do with your prophecy.

1. Who prophesied?
2. How did the prophecy come about?
3. What initiated it?
4. Why did they do it?
5. Were they compelled?
6. What were their motivations?
7. Are they infallible?
8. Are they likely to be truthful?
9. Can they be trusted?
10. Have they prophesied in the past?
11. How did that turn out?
12. What expelling of energies does as prophecy require?
13. Is the oracle / seer drained afterwards?
14. Is it effortless?
15. How is the prophecy communicated?
16. Was it open to interpretation?
17. Is there any disagreement over the wording?
18. Intent?
19. Are prophecies jealously guarded?
20. Secret?
21. Hoarded?
22. Recorded?
23. Publicly available?
24. Commonplace?
25. Was it bought?
26. Through sacrifice, dedication, prayer, devotion, merit?
27. Is there a ritual involved?
28. If yes, what sort of ritual?
29. Was the prophecy provided for someone’s entertainment?
30. As part of a larger scheme or plan?
31. Did someone ask for the prophecy?
32. How did they know they could ask for it?
33. Did they ask properly and completely?
34. Has the giver-of-prophecy been ambiguous or tricky in the past?
35. Do they have a reputation?
36. Is the Oracle omnipotent?
37. Omniescent?
38. Threatenable?
39. Intractable?
40. Is the prophecy clear-cut?
41. Esoteric?
42. How strong is the prophecy?
43. Is the fate that’s given predetermined?
44. Can outside events effect the prophecy?
45. Are there dangers to the prophesier in the act of divining?
46. Are there costs in terms of pain?
47. Sacrifice?
48. Effort?
49. Who is going to be pleased with the prophecy?
50. How will they react?
51. Are they going to be informed of the prophecy?
52. How?
53. When?
54. By whom?
55. Who will be displeased?
56. How will they react?
57. Who will tell them?
58. What immediate actions will they take?
59. What will they plan in the longer term?
60. When will the subjects of the prophecy find out about their involvement?
61. What other parties are involved?
62. What are their interests?
63. How can the prophecy be broken?
64. If it’s a chain of events, does the breaking of one destroy the others?
65. Is the prophecy mutable?
66. Resilient?
67. Fragile?
68. Are there more than one source of prophecies in the story?
69. If so, which is stronger?
70. Can conflicting prophecies be given?
71. What happens if there are?
72. Is anyone likely to lie about the prophecy?
73. How?
74. By withholding information?
75. By altering the prophecy?
76. Denying its’ existence?
77. What do they stand to gain from this?
78. What if people don’t believe in the prophecy?
79. Does that affect it at all?
80. How will they be convinced?

Naming Your Prophecies
Don’t feel stuck with that one word. Look! I’ve made another list for you. Not comprehensive, but enough to get excited about. Prophecies can also be called:

Divination
Casting
Dooms
Edicts
Fates
Foreboding
Foretelling
Geas
Oracles
Portent
Prayers answered
Premonition
Presciences
Prevision
Prognosis
Revelations
Visions

Says Who?
Prophecies can be given by:

Animated Objects (mirrors, ponds, candlesticks)
Augurs
Channellers
Clairvoyants
Dæmons
Demons
Diviners
Diviners
Djinnis
Enchanters
Enchantresses
Forecasters
Foretellers
Fortune-Tellers
Genies
Gods and Goddesses
Harbingers
Haruspexes
Heralds
Mediums
Midwives
Miracle Workers
Prophets
Psychics
Satanists
Seers
Shamen
Soothsayers
Theurgists
Voodooists
Wise Men
Wise Women
Witches
Wizards

There you go! A pretty comprehensive coverage of prophecies. Of course, if I’ve left something out, please comment below or contact me directly and I’ll remedy the situation immediately.

Cheers!

Pip.

Story Starter Prompts

Posted by Pip Hunn on April 21, 2010 Comments Off

The article on how to write a good story starter gives an overview on strong ways to begin your stories. This article will provide some more direct prompts to get your inky juices flowing and keyboard fingers a-tappin’!

1.Yup, he’s dead. Death brings out emotions and intensifies relationships. People in love turn to each other for comfort and support. Splits in families can widen, brought to the surface by grief. Death is a change-bringer, shifting relationships, power and goods. Empires rise and fall with changes of dynasty. Relationships end.

2.Outsider’s view. An observer can note events happening without getting caught up in them. Consider writing the opening to your story from the point of view of someone materially irrelevant. Introducing your antagonist by having them kill someone at the start of a story is a great way to build suspense. Starting to ‘get to know’ a character for a page or two, only to have them die, jolts us out of complacency. We sit up, pay attention, and wonder when the villain might return.

3.Betrayed! Let us see how characters respond to the unexpected. The great thing about betrayals is they raise deeply interesting questions. Why did the betrayal happen? What brought it about? Was it justified? Is this revenge final? What sort of reciprocations might happen now? Is this finishing, or escalating?

4.Drop us into a storm. Wind, thunder, lightning, that sort of thing. If that doesn’t suit your setting, make an earthquake. An explosion. The details don’t actually matter for the purposes of your story starter. This idea’s about pushing your characters to their limits. Crises demand reactions. Don’t let your characters have an easy life. Wrench them through trauma. Be brutal. What does a maelstrom bring to your story?

5.Promotions and advancement. Expected or unexpected. What shifts? Who’s envious? Is the new power wielded well? What new responsibilities come with the position?

6.Firings and demotions. The devastation you can cause here is thrilling. Families can be cast down. Circumstances reduced. How do your protagonists fare with having no income? The loss of social esteem? Will they get desperate? Toughen up? Run and hide? Ignore the new, unpleasant truths they’re faced with?

7.Throw a party. Begin with an event that brings people together. Festival, carnival, party, riot, wake, house-warming, official opening. What better place for people to meet, mingle, hatch plots, fall in love?

8.Start with a non-event. Have something spectacularly fail to happen. Have a party be a flop. Have nobody turn up to a riot or protest. Get the date wrong. Forget to invite luminaries. Have people cancel at the last minute. Have your story starter detail a blunder of epic proportions. Ohhh, look at that! Awkwardness! Bitterness! Boredom! Recriminations!

9.Get chatty. Let us overhear some gossip. Let us see something nobody else does. Let us hear private thoughts. We can figure out who’s important without being lectured for three pages. Everyone loves hearing something they aren’t supposed to. Why do you think we read? Indulge our voyeurism.

10.For the record… Interviews and interrogations are great ways to begin. Detainees and celebrities are interesting, attention-grabbing people. Your story starter can use an interrogation/interview format to quickly establish backgrounds, facts, and then move onto the action with a minimum of fuss.

11.Non-story material. Technical papers, media releases, user notes, newspaper letters, opinion articles. Color. Background. Use sparingly, and be cheeky where you can get away with it. Over-used, non-story material is wearying. Also be aware some readers will dismiss anything in italics as unnecessary and skip onto normal fonts.

12.Get caught. Synonymous with thrilling, seven letters, starting with c?
.
.
.
Capture. Especially the running, panting, thrashing variety. Why are they running? Who are the pursuers? What’s going to happen next?

13.Escape. Possibly even better than capture. You get all the tension of the attempt, plus the clear danger for the balance of the story of being re-captured. What else could you want for your story starter? An all-you-can-write buffet of mystery, excitement and suspense, and it isn’t even Chapter 2 yet!

There you are: 13 different ways to begin your story. Don’t forget to read the story starters overview if you haven’t already.
Now you have your beginning, what do you want to do from here? If you want to look at building a world for your story, check out the Creating Worlds series. Hunting for names for your protagonists? We’ve got it covered. you’ll also find more material in the archives to keep you going.
Hopefully, though, the article’s inspired you to…
Go write!

Story Starters

Posted by Pip Hunn on April 21, 2010 Comments Off

Beginning a creative writing story well is vital. Good story starters will hook your readers in and keep them interested. Developing strong story starters can be a challenge. Because you want to hook your readers in and keep them interested, the pressure’s on to come up with something elegant and enticing.

Traditional ‘story starter’ websites will give you a randomly-generated event as a starting point. The idea is that this will make your story interesting enough to keep readers going. This doesn’t work very well for a variety of reasons. Firstly, it’s insulting. You as a writer are intelligent and capable enough to not need mechanical aid in your writing. Secondly, randomly generated results tend not to make for organic, comfortable writing.

For very young writers, who need a lot of structure and guidance, random generation can be an OK experience. The rest of us, though, can come up with far better ways to start stories. Let’s have a look at what makes up a good beginning for your work.

Flexibility
One key strength when starting stories is flexibility. Many times, you will work through the first draft of a story, only to find that the beginning you’ve given it doesn’t work. Careful re-working and consideration will lead you to move, alter or excise the opening considerably. This can be a challenge, because we often put a lot of thought into the beginnings of stories. I know I agonize more over my first few sentences than any other part of the story!

Accept that the beginning you write may not be the beginning you finish with. When I’ve been writing, lots of my stories have begun at one place, only for a later edit to let me realize that they should have stated earlier, later, or from another perspective. Your opening scene might become the start to a later chapter. Your story might start a week or a year later. Maybe you can re-work your scene into a prologue or a flashback. You might need to let it go entirely. If you do, that’s OK. It’s served it’s purpose, and the rest of your story’s better for it having been there.

You can start in the past, or you can refer to it. Your work on establishing character’s histories doesn’t have to be abandoned. While the opening event happens, your characters can hint at, reminisce about or even openly discuss what was the normal, before your opening event or crisis took place.

Key points
Start well. This is pivotal. Your opening doesn’t need to be punchy, alarming, or dramatic. It does need to be well-written. Revise, edit, proof-read, get comments, try a few different versions even if you know you’re on to a good thing.

Start elegantly. Work every sentence carefully. Nowhere is re-writing and word selection more important. Read your story starter aloud. Get someone else to read it. Listen for cadence and rhythm.

Start quickly. Get things happening. Wandering descriptive passages can wait. You don’t have to start with action. You do have to start withsomething. Generate some excitement. For some ideas on how to begin with a strong event, read this article.

Begin with a crisis. By watching character’s reactions to the unfolding events, you can develop our understanding of what the ‘normal’ situation was. Characters act normally in normal settings. Boring. We all know how people shop, go to school, raise their children. The less time we spend here, the better. Get into the thick of the action. Is the action dizzying? That’s OK. There’s plenty of time for us to draw breath a few pages in.

Provide information and hints. Don’t tell us anything. This is good writing for any part of your work, but the hints and showings are great at the start of your story. Leaving pure information for later lets you shape your world subtly and focus on getting us hooked into the story. Concentrate on the event that hooks us in. Avoid extraneous detail.

Summary
We’ve looked at the elements that make successful story starters. Now take some time to look at your writing and critically consider your previous openers. Are they all the same? Are they too slow? Are they well positioned? Could they be improved by changing the time and place that your story starts?

This article has looked at very top-level approaches to story starters. For some direct prompts on dramatic, interesting ways to begin your stories, the article on direct prompts for story starters will be helpful to you.

Go write!