When you read back through your manuscript – and you might even get a sense of these parts while writing – you will find passages or sequences that don’t hit the right note. The first step in this revision is ensuring the manuscript works overall. Only then can you tighten up the specific scenes.
Read MoreDeus ex machina. It’s a device we’ve all heard about from Ancient Greek theatre where a god was delivered by a machine, sometimes quite literally, to solve the problems of the players on stage. The famous example is when Medea needed to escape, the sun god Helios sends a chariot to save her. It wasn’t part of a subplot. It wasn’t something that grew out of lack of ideas. It was a device to bring a conclusion t a difficult position of the characters… and the playwright.
Even thousands of years ago, it wasn’t without its detractors.
Read MoreWhen talking about adapting a book, the term usually concerns whether a book can be adapted to the screen. The concept is broader. Essentially, all writing is adapting.
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