Showing posts with label conflict. Show all posts
Showing posts with label conflict. Show all posts
Thursday, April 23, 2020

The Z Plot

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Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman Although it would be ludicrous to suggest that a story could follow a “Z” plot, the concept is, never...
Monday, March 23, 2020

Writing Blurbs That Sell

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Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman According to Tomasz Opasinski, a fifteen-year veteran of movie poster design, a movie poster fo...
Saturday, August 13, 2011

Fever Dream’s Opening Paragraphs (Chapters 1 through 20: Recap)

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Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman The opening paragraphs of Chapters 1 through 20 of Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child’s Fever Dream ...
Saturday, June 25, 2011

Plotting From Blurbs

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Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman Although they may not be novelists, publishing company employees who pen blurbs for books and motion ...
Thursday, May 19, 2011

Image and Imagination

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Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman Like many who are interested in horror fiction, I occasionally indulge myself by perusing online image...
Sunday, April 17, 2011

Context and Conundrum

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Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman Like all other types of fiction, the horror genre creates, maintains, and heightens suspense--in othe...
Sunday, April 3, 2011

From Story Idea to Story

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Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman A common question that aspiring writers ask the pros is "Where do you get your ideas?" Steph...
Sunday, October 17, 2010

Horror Fiction: The Pleasure of Pain, or Painful Pleasures

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Just as some philosophers see morality as emerging from a hedonistic pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain, some psychologists regard s...
Sunday, October 3, 2010

Bits & Pieces: Story One-Liners

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Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pulman No, I’m not endorsing USA Today . In fact, its political bent slants opposite of my own. However, I’...
Monday, September 6, 2010

Dinner Parties

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Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman One way to devise plots is to picture people sharing a meal at a restaurant. The diners could be a ...
Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Dust Jacket Plotting

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Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman If you’re like most people, you find plotting a novel difficult, even with such helps as those I have ide...
Monday, June 7, 2010

Establishing Verisimilitude

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Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman Imagine a woman sitting on her porch, reading a letter. Across a bed of bright petunias, she is being watc...
Sunday, January 31, 2010

Quick Tip: For A Story To Be Suspenseful, It Is Necessary For Its Protagonist To Suffer

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Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman In a comedy , the main character ends up better off at the end of the story than he or she was at its begi...
Monday, January 18, 2010

To Be Is To Be Perceived (And To Be Perceived Is To Be)

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Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman In The Devil’s Dictionary , Ambrose Bierce defines “edible” as meaning “good to eat and wholesome to diges...
Sunday, December 27, 2009

Quick Tip: Writing the Short-Short Story

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Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman A short-short story is a narrative that is under 1,000 words in length, It is often made up of only a sing...