New answers tagged plot
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This is "serial" or "episodic" adventure, like many TV shows. Traditionally, such adventures are tied together by some overarching goal or frame story. There must be some reason the character is collecting the items. In The Odyssey, Odysseus endured obstacles along the way to getting home. In The Labors of Hercules, Hercules served his cousin's bizarre whims ...
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Is there a name for this kind of novel?
As others have pointed out, it could easily be called "serial storytelling", or even more specifically, "fetch quest of the week".
What you describe, however, also reminds me of a type of narrative called "frame story". Examples include, but are definitely not limited to:
Boccaccio's Decameron;
Chaucer's Canterbury ...
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This would be serial storytelling, which is quite commonly found on television these days, but originated in literature, though many of the most famous "serial" books are typically sold with the complete story intact, making it the literature equivelent to binge watching a season of television on Netflix.
Originally, the format was used by many authors to ...
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I think I understand your problem and I don't have an answer to your question about a name. However, I do have a suggestion: write all the separate stories and then see if an overall conflict emerges or occurs to you. It is possible that while you are editing the first draft an idea will come to you or you may be more able to impose an idea.
Character ...
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I've heard that you need to discover your character's strengths and weaknesses, motivations, and their backstory. Get to know your characters and what makes them special. Good characters should have these things directly influencing each other. If you understand what makes your character who they are, what motivates them, ect., then you can understand how ...
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Hi Rebecca that is a really interesting concept and should be very feasible.
Introduce the wife first, apparently as a secondary or minor character.
Introduce the husband as though seen through the wife's eyes. For example, whatever he does is witnessed or experienced by her: don't show him in isolation as that would undermine the principle.
Along the ...
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It's not usually the protagonist, but there are many stories where our preconceptions about a character are challenged. It's more common that somebody turns out to be the bad guy instead of the good guy, but the other way around works too. Often, it's more complex and the reveal is just about providing a different backstory from the one that was implied. ...
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You can hint at the tragedy early on, as a flashback or memory, without revealing the full extent of it.
I don't know your story so this may be an inaccurate example, but you should get the idea and adapt it to your actual story.
Opening: A man is driving his car, he tries to take a sip of his coffee from a paper cup with a plastic lid. The lid pops off, ...
answered Jan 4 at 15:37
Amadeus-Reinstate-Monica
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It's probably helpful to look at two extremes.
1) Give everything away up front. Tell the story chronologically. This makes it a classic origin story: tragedy makes the (anti)-hero. Goes to get revenge/redemption. Anything from the original telling of most superhero myths (Batman, Spider-Man) to revenge exploitation films like Death Wish follow this ...
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I feel you should focus on mapping out your plot, and doing so without tropes in mind. Tropes are not a bad thing, but equally, they are not good things. Just looking through TV Tropes, you can see how often tropes are replicated in all genres and media forms.
I know my novel does contain tropes. It's been argued, from an academic point of view, that in ...
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Political correctness is not a challenge to clarity, it IS clarity, without your cruel and hateful or disdainful spin on it.
What you call political correctness is what I call not using language I know, on average, is perceived by others as hurtful. I don't use racial epithets because I know people of the race in question typically find those epithets ...
answered Dec 30 '19 at 19:23
Amadeus-Reinstate-Monica
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I think you should try completely avoiding tropes, but that's sort of hard to do in a vampire story. Tropes make books, movies and shows more predictable, but like I said, it's kinda hard to avoid in something about vampires. I think that if you are going to include tropes, make it a really interesting trope or one that isn't used often.
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Political correctness—the term—is a distraction. It was coined in Nazi Germany to describe what would not be censored, and all applications since have been disparaging. Applied to race relations it’s used for the disparaging sense, to deflect mere criticism and conflate it with full censorship, the better to preempt critical content. Often this usage is ...
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I think adding more "tropes" will just make it confusing, unless you have a plan for how to use them to create conflict.
Certainly there have been many stories (and series) focusing on many tropes: Vampires vs. Werewolves vs Witches. But the authors of those stories have a coherent plot in mind; for example all of the factions are going after the same ...
answered Dec 29 '19 at 12:08
Amadeus-Reinstate-Monica
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