Category Archives: Writing trends

The Villain’s Motive

There are multiple ways of uncovering how a person can become a villain. I can look at my own life and see what others did to harm me or what I have done to them by preventing them from accomplishing … Continue reading

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A Likable Villain?

Authors sometimes seek villains that their audience can identify with because they want the readers invested in the villain. This helps to propel a person to finish a book if they really don’t know what is going to happen to … Continue reading

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How Does Literacy Change Books?

The title may seem like a curious question. However, I wanted to trace how the increasing percentage of people who could read changes the publishing business. Do the types of books favored by the public change as a population becomes … Continue reading

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The Lead-footed Writer

In movies when an event is crucial to survival (such as disarming a bomb) the clock keeps ticking away on until the last minute as the hero tries to figure out which wire to cut. He wipes the sweat off … Continue reading

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Star Words

Creating a good plot is one of the most difficult parts of writing. A perfectly plotted story is going to be snatched up by readers, but so far we seem to have only produced one of these plots that most … Continue reading

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The Fable of the Hook

Readers seeking excitement prefer a story starting with the main character fleeing down a dark alley, reeling from an initial enemy strike, or near the edge of Niagara Falls. This immediate danger creates an adrenaline rush. Even if the reader … Continue reading

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The Teenage Genre

When a library placed a book in the young adult or YA category that used to mean two things: The book was within the reading level of 12 to 18 year-olds, often a sixth to eighth grade level, and the … Continue reading

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Who’s the Real Villain?

As a legend Robin Hood represents the kind of principled nonconformist on which many heroes are based. We love to read about people who confront government wrong-doing even in a criminal manner as he did. But, if a similar character … Continue reading

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The Sports Hero’s Journey

When advised to base stories on the hero’s journey, I realized that the “monomyth model” constructed plots based on a large sampling of Greek mythology. I’ve always had a suspicion that these myths were based on real people. The characters … Continue reading

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Sports Lit

While watching a recent bone crunching pro-football game on TV, I saw a player dive into a fracas and come up with the fumbled football. He took off for his goal, running for the sidelines to avoid being pummeled by … Continue reading

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