Finley Matthews

OPULENCE IS NEARLY HERE finleymatthews.com/2021/12/14/opu…

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🗨️Punctuation is great for this! Try to have the speech reflect what you would want to use the adverb for. Taking the earlier example, using dashes in the speech can help to show this excitement without stating it to the reader. Such as: "I - I can't believe that happened."

You really just said that? It is odd how that when you are in school, you are taught some bad habits. Having grown up, I realise that a lot of writers still use 'said'. They don't remove the word altogether like I was made to believe. 👇

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👍Can tropes be done well? Simple answer - yes For example, if you take the trope of "enemies to lovers" but as soon as the characters get close, you rip the carpet out from underneath them, it makes the enemy hated as the reader also gets close to that character by proxy.

A few years ago, I took part in a writing class. Here the teacher I had was quite good, he would take us through why info-dumping was a bad idea. Anyways, he sat us down and said this: "Tropes are bad. Don't use them." I believe tropes to be actually rather useful👇

An issue that you have to be careful of is "the point of no return." This is where you have a character, such as the protagonist, and you put them through much emotional damage that you as the reader almost become numb to it. Read more 👇 finleymatthews.com/the-point-of-n…

👑 A particular method of killing a character that truly rips apart a reader is based around character arcs. Having a character have an arc is great, but killing them off can also make it even worse.

Killing a character - it's a difficult one to do right. You have to first make the reader like the character or at least have some connection with them. But when is the right time to actually kill them off? Or do you just keep them alive forever, leading to "plot armour?” 👇

❓Different stakes that work Find what matters to your character, build a relationship between them and that thing, and then find a way to get as close as you can to ripping it from them. Read more here 👇 finleymatthews.com/who-cares-if-t…

🤔What stakes matter? It’s the character's link to these stakes that make it so gripping. LoTR = As much as Middle Earth is a brilliant world, I don't care about its ending because of the setting. I want the ring to be destroyed to stop the trauma it has brought Frodo and Sam.

☄️Who cares if the world ends? I don't want to come across as one of those movie snobs, but I was watching a film recently and started to wonder: do I even care about the stakes? Stakes create weight to a story. It helps to create both tension and an emotional connection.

Utilising the two methods together, I feel it helps combine both the outline writer in me, but also the discovery type which I feel helps write more natural-feeling characters. Read more here 👇 finleymatthews.com/plotter-how-mu…

☁️The Floating Outline In this document, I pull it up when I am about to start writing and label a few things: - What *needs* to happen in this chapter to progress the plot? - What *details* need to be given/hinted to the reader? - What can make this chapter *exciting?*

Plotter: How much planning is enough? I have to confess. I am a plotter. Plotter = plans before they write. Pantser = plans as they write. I like to compare this to learning styles. Not everyone learns in the same way, they require different methods. See more 👇