Forced Into a Pirate Crew, Ricky Faces Life and Death Decisions
Forced into a pirate crew, Ricky never wanted this life. But when the choice is to steal or be thrown overboard, which will he choose? In the Caribbean Chronicles, discover how pirates of old were sea-going gangs who preyed on the young and poor.
Mastering Scene Structure
Writing Tips for Students and Creatives
If you want to craft compelling scenes that keep readers engaged, you need a structured approach. Whether you’re using a free AI writing generator or relying on traditional methods, these essential elements will guide your storytelling and help you master scene structure.
1. Define Your Lead’s Goal 📝
Your protagonist must enter each scene with a clear objective. This goal drives the narrative forward and creates a sense of purpose for both the character and the reader.
2. Introduce Conflict & Promise Pain ⚡
Without conflict, your scene lacks tension. Make sure your character faces emotional, mental, or physical challenges. Suspense builds between the promise and the payoff.
3. Progression: From Goal to Conflict to Disaster 🔄
The scene should escalate, moving from the initial objective to obstacles and ultimately to a moment of disaster that forces change. This creates momentum and keeps readers invested.
4. Reveal New Information 🔍
A strong scene uncovers something fresh—an old secret, a hidden motive, or a shift in perspective. The discovery should push the story in a new direction.
5. Sprinkle in Spice ✨
Whether through humor, wit, or a touching moment, adding variety keeps the scene dynamic. Even in dark moments, a bit of contrast enhances emotional impact.
6. Show Conflict Between Characters 🤝⚡
Good scenes don’t just focus on external events. They highlight interpersonal struggles that reveal deeper layers of your characters.
7. Deepen Character Development 🛠️
A well-crafted scene should expose flaws, strengths, and emotional depth. Readers connect with characters who evolve through their experiences.
8. Characterize Through Reaction 🎭
How your character responds to challenges reveals their personality. A fearful retreat or a bold move forward can reshape how readers perceive them.
9. Build Suspense ⏳
Every scene should make the reader ask: What happens next? Hold back information just long enough to maintain intrigue.
10. Transform the Story or Character 🔄
A scene should leave something altered—a relationship, a belief, or a goal. Change is the foundation of compelling storytelling.
11. Restate Your Lead’s Goal as Necessary 📌
If the scene shifts, remind readers (subtly) what your protagonist wants and what’s at stake.
12. Never Let Your Lead Relax 😰
If your character gets too comfortable, the story stalls. Maintain urgency by increasing risks or introducing new obstacles.
13. Raise the Stakes 🎲
The potential for failure should escalate. The more your character stands to lose, the more engaged your reader will be.
14. Deliver the Promised Pain ⚠️
Earlier, you set up pain—now make it real. Emotional wounds, physical danger, or moral dilemmas should land with impact.
15. Set Up Future Scenes 🔗
Scenes should interconnect. Lay groundwork for what’s coming so the reader feels a sense of progression.
16. Payoff the Suspense 🎭
A scene should resolve some tension but leave room for more. A mix of answers and new mysteries keeps readers turning pages.
17. Introduce a New Wrinkle 🔀
Nothing should be easy. A last-minute complication keeps the tension high and prevents predictability.
18. Leave the Character’s World Messy 🌪️
Avoid neat resolutions. Unresolved conflict is what keeps stories alive. Readers should feel the need to continue to see how things unfold.
19. Force Your Main Character to Choose 🎭
By the end of the scene, your protagonist should face a tough decision. Two or more paths should present dilemmas that push them further into the story’s conflict.
Refining Your Scene with Free Tools
If you’re struggling with structure, consider using a free AI writing generator or free script writing software to refine your drafts. These tools can help you brainstorm ideas, reorganize your scene flow, and enhance clarity.
For those looking for essay writing tips, these same principles apply to storytelling essays and analytical writing. Creative writing tips often overlap with fundamental writing tips for students, ensuring your work remains structured and engaging.
Keep refining, keep experimenting, and most importantly—keep writing!
Escalating Conflict in Storytelling
Writing Tips for Students and Creatives
📖 In storytelling, escalating both external and internal conflicts is essential to deepen your lead character’s journey and keep readers engaged. Here are several strategies to intensify these conflicts:
External Conflicts
🔥 Escalating Threats
🔍 Introduce increasingly formidable adversaries or obstacles.
A detective might start with a simple case that unravels into a complex conspiracy, endangering their life and loved ones.
⏳ Compounding Misfortunes
⚠️ Pile up challenges that exacerbate the protagonist’s situation.
Losing a job could lead to financial ruin, straining relationships, and forcing unethical decisions.
⏰ Time Constraints
💣 Impose deadlines that heighten tension.
A character racing against time to defuse a bomb or find a cure for a spreading disease adds urgency and stress.
🌪️ Environmental Hazards
🏔️ Place characters in settings that naturally escalate danger.
Natural disasters, war zones, or hostile terrains force characters to confront external perils.
⚔️ Betrayal by Allies
💔 Have trusted friends or allies turn against the protagonist.
This leads to feelings of isolation and vulnerability.
Internal Conflicts
⚖️ Moral Dilemmas
🤔 Confront characters with choices that challenge their ethics.
For example, sacrificing one person to save many leads to intense internal struggle.
😨 Fear and Insecurity
🛑 Exploit the character’s deepest fears or insecurities.
A hero afraid of failure might hesitate at crucial moments, intensifying their internal battle.
🔀 Conflicting Desires
💼 Present mutually exclusive goals.
Choosing between career advancement and personal relationships forces tough decisions.
🕰️ Past Trauma
💭 Resurface unresolved issues from the character’s past.
A previous loss or mistake may affect their current decisions and stability.
🌀 Identity Crisis
🔎 Challenge the character’s sense of self.
Unexpected heritage revelations or shifts in personal beliefs lead to profound self-doubt.
By intertwining these escalating external and internal conflicts, you can create a compelling narrative that drives your lead character from bad to worse, maintaining tension and reader investment throughout the story.
✍️ How do you escalate conflict in your stories? Share your thoughts below!
Defeat Writing Obstacles
Resist the Enemy and He Will Flee—James 4:7
Defeat Writing Obstacles
Have you ever felt that no matter how hard you work, your efforts seem blocked at every turn? The harder you try, the more frustration and failure you face, leaving you wondering if there’s something deeper at play.Defeat your writing obstacles with the insight and strategies needed to overcome challenges and move forward with purpose.
When our work, finances, or progress feel hindered in ways that defy logic, it’s often a sign of spiritual opposition. Sniper fire—or perhaps machine gun fire—keeps us pinned down so we cannot see the larger landscape. Often, the solution is not to charge out of our foxhole and directly into enemy gunfire but to disrupt the enemy’s flanks. By acting in ways he doesn’t expect, we shift the battle to a different sector and draw his forces away from our front.
Look, the devil is not omnipresent. Neither are his fallen angels. There are a limited number of demons. How many, no one can say, but we know that only a third fell from heaven. That means the devil’s forces are outgunned two-to-one. Best of all, Jesus has already defeated the devil. The victory is already ours. So let’s be smart about how we engage. Start with attacks that hit the enemy where it hurts.
Radical Generosity Helps Defeat Your Writing Obstacles
If your work or finances are under attack, bless others with what you have. This could mean giving away resources, helping someone in need, or supporting a ministry. Generosity counters the devil’s attempts to keep you focused on lack and discouragement. It shifts your expectation of provision to God’s abundance and faithfulness.
Worship and Praise Defeats Writing Obstacles
Worship disrupts the enemy’s propaganda machine. Declaring God’s sovereignty and power silences the enemy’s lies, which are fueled by doubt and darkness. There’s a reason teams cheer, armies advancing shout, and crowds scream for victory. Spoken words project the outcome we expect. Our words carry life and death, so praise the Lord with boldness. Thank Him for small blessings and for disasters that didn’t happen. There’s always another reason to thank God. Find it and declare it aloud. This takes your focus off present struggles and refocuses it on the reality of God’s victory.
Invest in Someone Else’s Success Defeats Writing Obstacles for You and Others
If your efforts seem fruitless, sow time, energy, or encouragement into someone else. Helping others succeed frustrates the enemy’s attempts to isolate you or keep you self-focused. When you help a brother or sister advance, you move the line forward, and that’s the point of an advance.
Forgiveness and Reconciliation Always Defeats Writing Obstacles
If your writing success feels out of reach, take a closer look at your relationships for any unresolved conflicts. Conflict within the ranks hinders progress. Extend forgiveness, even if you didn’t cause the problem. Be the first to “make it right.” Repairing relationships thwarts the enemy’s attempts to divide and conquer.
Intercessory Prayer? You Secret to Defeating Writing Obstacles
Rather than focusing only on your struggles and lack of writing success, pray fervently for others. Everyone is facing battles, whether seen or unseen. Keep a list, pray their names, and learn about their circumstances so you can pray with purpose. Standing in the gap for others brings joy, peace, and rest into their lives, which the enemy despises. Want to frustrate the enemy? Make him complain about your prayers.
Spiritual Acts of Service Defeat the Enemies of Your Writing
Volunteer in areas unrelated to your struggles and writing. The enemy won’t expect you to show up in another place. Sometimes, your greatest success will come from stepping just a few feet down the line.
Declare God’s Promises Over Your Writing
Speak Scripture over your challenges—especially writing challenges. If the enemy brought the problem, respond with God’s Word and send him running. Focusing on God’s unchanging promises enlarges your view of His power and diminishes your fear. Speak victory over your situation because the enemy cannot withstand the truth of God’s Word.
Celebrate Small Victories In Your Writing
If the enemy targets your progress, praise God for even the smallest victories. The enemy’s goal is destruction, so staying alive is a win. Celebrating undermines his attempts to discourage you.
Writing IS Outreach and Evangelism
Share your testimony or the reason for your hope in Christ. Spiritual warfare intensifies when you bring others closer to God. Evangelism shifts the battle into enemy territory.
Take a Sabbath Rest From Your Writing
Resting in God’s presence is a powerful act of trust. If the enemy is attacking your work, stepping back in faith signals your confidence in God’s ability to fight for you. God has all the time in the world to solve your problems, so use some of His and rest.
How This Defeats the Enemy
These actions shift the focus from your struggles to God’s kingdom priorities. The enemy expects a head-on fight in your area of difficulty. Instead, by attacking his plans through worship, generosity, or helping others, you disrupt his strategy. This aligns with Matthew 6:33: “Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”
By engaging in actions that reflect God’s heart, you shift the spiritual battle to a place where the enemy is unprepared, operating in the fullness of God’s power.
How to Win Over the Acquiring Editor
From Passive to Active Voice—Reality Coaching for Writers
Main Theme: The podcast episode “How to Win Over the Acquiring Editor” focuses on the importance of using active voice instead of passive voice in writing, both in fiction and non-fiction. It explains why passive voice is detrimental to engagement and offers practical advice on identifying and correcting it.
Key Ideas & Facts for How to Win Over the Acquiring Editor:
- The “Green Smiley” Metaphor: The podcast uses a visual metaphor of “green smileys” to represent good writing, specifically writing that avoids passive voice. Websites and search engines often flag passive writing with “red,” “orange,” or “neutral” (not green) indicators, highlighting the importance of this issue for writers who care about online reach.
- Defining Passive Voice: The hosts explain that passive voice occurs when the subject of a sentence receives the action, rather than performing it. Examples include:
- “The room was cleaned.” (Who cleaned it?)
- “The flowers were cut.” (Who cut them?)
- “The lights were turned on.” (Who turned them on?)
- Quote: “when you don’t have a attached person to the action where there’s anonymity where there’s well who cleaned the room… you don’t want to just slap on a Band-Aid you want to you want the sentences to uh bring something to the story.”
- The Problem with Passive Voice: Passive voice creates a sense of distance and anonymity, and ultimately reduces engagement. It leads to:
- Lack of Character Agency: When actions are passive, characters feel like they’re being acted upon instead of driving the plot.
- Loss of Reader Interest: Passive voice can bore the reader, slowing down pacing and failing to create emotional connection with characters and/or situations
- Lack of Emotional Depth: The writer fails to convey the character’s thoughts or feelings, which can also fail to move the story forward
- Lack of Confidence: In non-fiction, passive voice undermines the writer’s authority by making them appear unsure of their statements.
- Quote: “when you’re writing in a passive voice you are allowing someone else to drive the action that’s kind of the bottom line of what this is”
- Quote: “if you don’t care the reader’s not going to care about Maria either she’s just a prop prop in the story”
- Moving to Active Voice: To fix passive sentences, the writer needs to clearly identify the person or thing performing the action and make that the subject of the sentence.
- Passive Example: “The room was cleaned by Maria.”
- Active Example: “Maria bustled around the room, huffing as she cleaned.”
- Quote: “Maria bustled around the room huffing as she cleaned it you know well we’re getting some emotion something about Maria we’re it’s it’s oh she’s she’s bustling around huffing she’s upset about something you know it gives us a clue and it’s like you said Eddie it moves the story forward”
Pacing and Story Movement: Active voice contributes to better pacing and moves the story forward. Avoiding unnecessary details, like long descriptions of travel, keeps the reader engaged. The source points out that readers want to get to the main, exciting parts of the story and may give up on a piece of writing if it lags unnecessarily.
- Quote: “you never tell anybody how to get from point A to point B unless there’s a a unique way to get from point A to point B that nobody’s ever done before and they need to know it”
- Passive Voice in First Drafts: Passive voice often appears in first drafts, as writers are exploring the story. Recognizing this, they must edit these sentences out in subsequent drafts. The need to ‘kill your darlings’ is emphasized.
- Quote: “in the second draft you’ve got to cut it and I think beginning writers they they’re afraid to cut things and and they fall in love with their words”
Identifying Passive Sentences: The hosts provide practical tips for identifying passive voice:
- Look for sentences where there is no clear subject performing the action.
- Identify and replace words like “was,” “were,” “would,” “could,” “have,” and “has.”
- Use technology, such as chatGPT, to help identify and rewrite passive sentences (though they clarify the technology tends to default to passive, requiring the writer to still ask for it in active).
- Quote: “look for sentences that belong to no one no person… look for words like would was was W first thing I I just search for was and look for was and figure out a way to just Flip Flip it into an active into an active sentence”
- Active Voice = Authority In non-fiction particularly, writing in the active voice signals to readers that you are an authority on the subject, not merely ‘thinking about’ it.
Takeaways for How to Win Over the Acquiring Editor:
- Active voice is crucial for engaging writing in all genres.
- Passive voice creates distance, slows pacing, and reduces reader interest.
- Writers should be proactive in identifying and correcting passive voice in their work.
- Editing and rewriting, including ‘killing your darlings,’ is necessary to achieve clear, active writing.
- Writers can use tools like ChatGPT to help rewrite passive sentences.
Conclusion:
This podcast emphasizes the importance of active voice in writing and provides writers with strategies for improving their craft. The use of metaphor and accessible language makes a complex topic easy to understand and apply.