1. Elements of Fiction
Focus onPLOT

2. EnhancingYour Understanding
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3
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Set the Stage
Find Some Resolution
Develop the Conflict
Make a path, deviate, return, discover.
3. Set The Stage
When, Where, and Who
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4. 5. WHEN
If you nurture your mind, body, and spirit, your time will expand. You will gain a new perspective that will allow you to accomplish much more.
Brian Koslow
6. WHERE
The set is absolutely amazing and unbelievable. The set places the choir in the courtyard in front of a temple ruin forcing us to become part of the drama.
Bill Downs
7. MOOD
Of all the ruinous and desolate places my uncle had ever beheld, this was the most so. It looked as if it had once been a large house of entertainment; but the roof had fallen in, in many places, and the stairs were steep, rugged, and broken. There was a huge fire-place in the room into which they walked, and the chimney was blackened with smoke; but no warm blaze lighted it up now. The white feathery dust of burnt wood was still strewed over the hearth, but the stove was cold, and all was dark and gloomy.
Charles Dickens
8. We left the home place behind, mile by slow mile, heading for the mountains, across the prairie where the wind blew forever.
At first there were four of us with one horse wagon and its skimpy load.Pa and I walked, because I was a big boy of eleven.My two little sisters romped and trotted until they got tired and had to be boostedup to the wagon bed.
That was no covered Conestoga, like Pas folks came West in, but just an old farm wagon, drawn by one weary horse, creaking and rumbling westward to the mountains, toward the little woods town where Pa thought he had an old uncle who owned a little two-bit sawmill.
9. INCITING INCIDENT
Setting the Stage
10. Inciting INCIDENT
11. 2
Develop The Conflict
Give em something to fight over!
12. Beginnings are usually scary and endings are usually sad, but its the middle that counts.Sandra Bullock
In the Middle
13. 14. Fiction is love and hate and agreement and
and common adventure.
A. B. Guthrie Jr.
15. Conflict Exists Inside and Outside
16. Man vs. SELF
The greatest conflicts are not between two people but between one person and himself.
Garth Brooks
17. Man vs. MAN
There are terrible conflicts that arise out of misunderstandings and people just think someone else is doing something terrible when they're not, and we know how to fix that.
Guy Burgess
18. Man vs. SOCIETY
In any free society, the conflict between social conformity and individual liberty is permanent, unresolvable, and necessary
Kathleen Norris
19. Man vs. NATURE
The wise man in the storm prays to God, not for safety from danger, but deliverance from fear
Ralph Waldo Emerson
20. Man vs. SUPERNATURAL
It's a fabulous story . . . It's got these supernatural elements as well. It's one man's fight against a man-shaped monster and against his mother who is bestial, and then against a dragon.
Andy Orchard
21. Whatever course you decide upon, there are always difficulties arising which tempt you to believe that your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires courage.Ralph Waldo Emerson
Rising Action, Increasing Tension
22. SUSPENSE
Darkness. Dust. The musty odor of old furniture and draperies. The stifling inability to draw a free breath. The cold, paralyzing terror. And the furtive steps drawing nearer and nearer!
--The Mystery of the Empty Room (Augusta Huiell Seaman)
23. FORESHADOWING
but a singular sense of impending calamity, that should indeed have served me as a warning, drove me onward.
H.G. Wells, The Time Machine
24. FLASHBACK
I walked out of the room, and saw the portrait of my mother in the otherwise empty hallway. I remembered, years ago, my father would stare mindlessly at it for minutes, sometimes hours, before a bird chirping would awaken him from his trance. Without warning, a bird chirped, and I immediately tore my eyes away from that portrait.
25. We want a story that starts out with an earthquake and works its way up to a
Samuel Goldwyn
26. 27. The CLIMAX of the Mountain
28. 3
Find Some Resolution
Happily Ever After
29. I wanted a perfect ending. Now Ive learned, the hard way, that some poems dont rhyme, and some stories dont have a clear beginning, middle and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing whats going to happen next.Gilda Radner
30. 31. TheRESOLUTION
Anything that happens after the climax
Can be long or short
TheDENOUEMENT
How it all works out for the characters.
Not always present
THE END of the Story
32. RESOLUTION
If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.
Orson Welles
33. DENOUEMENT
I knew I wanted the ending of the story to be poignant and heart-felt. If I couldn't do it, I didn't want to waste my time writing the rest of the novel, knowing it would collapse at the end.
Nicholas Sparks
34. Want to jump to a bookmark in your video? Hover over the video and youll be pleasantly surprised.
Did we mention you can add bookmarks, includefades, andtrimyour videos now?
Fountain Geyser
35. FOCUS ON FICTION
Whats Your Message?