Questions 215: Graphing Story Structures (Writing Instruction Series 9)

jdsawyer Nanocast / Teaching January 16, 2017 January 6, 2017

In this ninth installment in our miniseries on teaching students how to write, Rob asks:
“I use the classic pyramid plot diagram to teach story structure. Is there another way that’s more engaging?”

Resources mentioned:
Kurt Vonnegut’s Story Shape Graphs
Dan Wells’s 7-Point Plot Lecture

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jdsawyer

After a childhood in academia, J. Daniel Sawyer declared his independence by dropping out of high school and setting off on a series of adventures in the bowels of the film industry, the venture capital culture of silicon valley, surfing safaris, bohemians, burners, historians, theologians, adventurers, climbers, drug dealers, gangbangers, and inventors before his past finally caught up to him. Trapped in a world bookended by one wall falling in Berlin and other walls going up around suburbia and along national borders throughout the world, he rediscovered his deep love of history and, with it, and obsession with predicting the future as it grew aggressively out of the past. To date, this obsession has yielded over thirty books and innumerable short stories, the occasional short film, nearly a dozen podcasts stretching over a decade and a half, and a career creating novels and audiobooks exploring the world through the lens of his own peculiar madness, in the depths of his own private forest in a rural exile, where he uses the quiet to write, walk on the beach, and manage a production company that brings innovative stories to the ears of audiences across the world. For news and free stories, sign up for his occasional newsletter. Or find his contact info, podcasts, and more on his home page at http://www.jdsawyer.net

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