balancing internal/external plot
How to blend the emotional journey with the outer one.
greetings, team curiosity!
this week’s topic
resources
1. greetings, team curiosity!
Happy 2nd minisode, Turning to Story!
We had so much fun with last week’s minisode, we’re back for another! As a reminder, while we’re refilling our creative wells, we’re dropping shorter episodes focused on singular aspects of craft. We derived these topics from listener questions and suggestions (which you can submit here).
Ready for this week’s? It’s now available wherever you get your pods!
2. this week’s topic
This week’s topic is balancing internal plot with external plot. Learn more about when to focus on your character’s misbelief (or lie, as Anna prefers to call it), when to lean into the third rail, and how to ground each scene on the third rail we discussed last week. Hint: When should you do it? All the time. 🤓
3. this week’s resources
Anna mentions her favorite Christmas movie, the 1988 classic with the iconic tag line, “40 stories of sheer adventure!” We speak, of course, of Die Hard.
Otherwise, that’s it for mentioned resources, though a friend recommended the following craft book to Lyssa: Steering the Craft, by Ursula K. Le Guin. Lyssa will check it out and report back, but here is a quote from the intro that makes it sound quite promising to our Turning to Story ethos:
"A skill is something you know how to do. Skill in writing frees you to write what you want to write. It may also show you what you want to write. Craft enables art.
There's luck in art. And there's the gift. You can't earn that. But you can learn skill, you can earn it. You can learn to deserve your gift."
Have a suggestion for a future topic? Reply in the comments, to this email, or shoot us a message. We’d love to answer your craft-related questions!