What makes a great scene stand out? Is it dialogue? Action? How about setting? All those components create a great scene, but I believe the one element that makes a scene live for ever is the symbolism that evokes emotion and truth. Maybe it’s a dialogue zinger, or through a meaningful action. Or even a metaphor in the setting, but all these elements are just tools writers use to create symbolism. What am talking about? There’s a great scene in the recent Sandra Bullock movie, Premonition, where the heroine is told the fate of her husband. We don’t even hear the policeman talk, really. What we see is what Sandra sees as she is told – a woman pushing her child in a stroller, a man mowing the lawn, a […]
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About Susan May Warren
Former Russian Missionary Susan May Warren is the best-selling author of more than 40 novels and novellas with Tyndale, Barbour and Steeple Hill, and Summerside. A Christy award and RITA winner, and multiple finalist for the RITA, Christy and winner of Inspirational Readers Choice contest, Susan currently has over a million books in print. A seasoned women’s events speaker and writing teacher, she is the founder of http://www.mybooktherapy.com an online community for writers, and runs a fiction editing service teaching writers how to tell a great story. Visit her online at: http://www.susanmaywarren.com.Author Archive | Susan May Warren
Ask the Doc: Creating Meaningful Action
Q: You talk about meaningful action behind dialogue. How do I get my story to flow? Dialogue comes naturally for me. But how do I make meaningful action seem natural? The Doc says: Every day my husband comes home from work and we sit in the kitchen and talk. During that time, I clean the sink, I chop vegetables, I check over homework, maybe feed the dog, sometimes he’ll set the table. Our conversation, behind the words, is about family, and life. You can tell that I care about family by my actions. Likewise, your characters will have things that are important to them, meaningful actions that define who they are and what is important to them. These are the things happening behind the words. Ask: What is a part […]
Read the RestBook Therapy Picks: My Hands Came Away Red
“The clear topaz of the water as we putted into the tiny wooden dock, moving splashes of color against creamy sand as fish darted away below, the untouched sweep of beach….” It’s with these evocative words that Lisa McKay brings us into the world of Seram, an island off Indonesia, in her book,
Read the RestPrescriptions: How to hook your reader on the first page! Wk 1
In today’s competitive book market, a writer needs to capture their reader in the first paragraph, if not the first line. A good hook sets the tone for a book, it gives voice to the character and immediately draws the reader into the story. This class will reveal how to use Stakes, Sympathy, 5 Ws, Action, and Story Question to teach participants how to create a hook that will catch your reader and won’t let go. I have a quote by Gabriel Garcia Marquez over my computer (He won the 1992 Nobel Prize for Literature for (100 years of solitude). BTW, it sold over 10million copies. “One of the most difficult things is the first paragraph.. in the first paragraph, you solve most of the problems with your book. The […]
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