Many writers have documented rules, tips, tricks, and suggestions for new writers to improve their craft. Some of the books I recommend for this include Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat, Stephen King’s On Writing, Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones, and The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron.
You can also find great advice from MasterClass. I particularly like the courses offered by Malcolm Gladwell, Steve Martin, the Duffer Brothers, and Aaron Sorkin.
I’ve recently stumbled upon an article by Jack McDevitt called Twelve Blunders. Because this is the most recent advice on writing I’ve read, I’m now seeing these blunders EVERYWHERE.
They show up on Netflix shows, Amazon original movies, and in several books I’ve been reading. No, I’m not going to call out individual examples. It won’t take you long to find plenty of your own.
I think two of the blunders are particularly egregious. Jack McDevitt’s fifth blunder is about “Driving the Narrative: Nobody Would Care about This in a Million Years.” His seventh blunder is “Major Events Take Place Offstage.” You can read his article for more details.
These two blunders are all about what scenes to include and what scenes not to include in your story. Suppose your protagonist gets married during the time frame in which your story takes place. Should you include the wedding ceremony scene? It depends. Is this story primarily a romance? If so, then it’s hard to imagine the wedding ceremony scene not being relevant to the story! What if your story is a crime thriller? Then, it’s possible you may not need to depict the wedding ceremony scene. Again, it depends.
I love trying to understand why some stories work better than others. Lately, this question of what scenes to include has loomed large. One romance book totally skips over showing how two of the characters in a relationship broke up. Another movie has at least ten scenes that are essentially the same. Showing just one example would have been more than enough.
Getting this right is tricky. If it were easy, I wouldn’t be seeing these blunders EVERYWHERE!
A final thought: We live in a world where there is more content than we could ever consume. Often, this content is produced as quickly as possible. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that much of this content is filled with storytelling blunders!
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