Ashley Tenn

In our last post, we took a look at Christopher Booker's 7 Basic Plots and covered the Journey and Return, Quest, and Rebirth archetypes. We'll cover the final four structures here. … read more

Stories are organized around a sequence of events that contain plot drivers that influence what happens in that section. Throughout time, storytellers have drawn upon common story… read more

My last post on this topic covered worldbuilding with a purpose, so now I'd like to explore the opposite approach. The truth is that not all stories need extensive worldbuilding, especially… read more

Genre is a literary term used to describe categories of fiction. You'll recognize the popular ones, which turn up as special sections at your favorite bookstore: science fiction, fantasy,… read more

I'll preface this post by saying that if you write straight-up action or pure fluff because that's what you enjoy writing, you can probably skip this week's lesson. 

Still… read more

The term worldbuilding conjures images of secondary worlds, far away planets, and magic systems, so much so that it has become ubiquitous with writing and game development,… read more

Protagonist vs. Antagonist

Every story needs a main cast, but which characters qualify? How do we know who is important and who plays a supporting role?  Let's talk about… read more

"Exposition" can be a scary word. In some writing circles, "experts" will warn you to exercise extreme caution when using it, or they'll make it out to be a difficult but… read more