Can You See A Sunset Without Looking? Exploring the Visual Imagination

by Addy Farmer

I wonder if you can summon up the image of a glorious sunset inside your head? Can you capture the nuance of colour in the sky, the shape of the sun, the texture of the scene? I'll leave that one with you for now.

This ability is sometimes referred to as 'the mind's eye':

Here be Sarah Mussi - How to End a Story

Candy Gourlay interviews Sarah Mussi on the final stop of the Here Be Dragons Blog Tour

Candy Gourlay: I keep banging on about how the book industry is putting too much emphasis on pitch and opening hooks to the detriment of the rest of the work. What about the middle? I find myself complaining. What about the ending?  As it happens, my lovely pal Sarah Mussi has been stomping through a blog tour to promote her new book Here Be Dragons. In the course of the tour, Sarah's blogged about the way she structured her novel along the lines of the three-act structure. Viz:

Three act structure: http://tinyurl.com/ywveuj | Flickr - Photo 

So far, she's talked about The Hook, The Inciting Incident, The First Turning Point, The Point of No Return, The Darkest Hour, and Act 3 and The Climax. Notes from the Slushpile is her seventh and final stop. Lucky us, she's offered to discuss:

Frankenwriter: How to Bring Your Character's Voice To Life

By Kathryn Evans

Kathryn Evans - New Girl On The Blog

Learning the mechanics of story is pretty straightforward.  Basically you need a Beginning, a Middle and an End. OK, it’s slightly more complicated than that but there are many excellent resources that’ll break it down for you – our own Maureen Lynas tells you how in Five Bricks of Story and Life and Seven Steps for Plotting and Pacing 

You can even buy software programmes to help: the Snowflake method has been recommended to me on a couple of occasions.

You can learn all this, you can follow it to the letter, and then you can read your story and find it is a dead thing. You may have the mechanics but where is the heart? Where is the spark? Where do you get the bolt of lightening that allows your Frankenbook to rise from the table and live, LIVE, LIVE!