Just Ginger

Dear Aspiring Author, Thank you for submitting your paranormal book proposal to us Although I enjoyed your writing, the plot seemed a little too contrived.  Sincerely yours, Alicia Agent Contrived: create or bring about a situation by deliberate use of skill and artifice. I’ve been watching Shadow and Bone, a fantasy series on Netflick adapted from the Shadow and Bone novels by Leigh Bardugo. Characters from a second series she wrote called The Crow have been interwoven into the storyline. To be honest, while I read all the Shadow and Bone books, I only read the first book of the Crow series as it didn’t appeal to me as much. In the TV series, the writers take a lot of liberties and co-mingled the two story lines. In the second season, the Crows (a merry band of thieves) are tasked with buying or stealing an antique sword. As the scenes dedicated to this endeavor unfold, it’s difficult to believe this is a seasoned band of thieves. Now, I’m not a thief, but one would think the...

Eight years ago I wrote a blog titled “The Ripple Effect in Storytelling.” Recently, I was reading a novel by a seasoned author who failed to remember the ripple effect. It was so disconcerting, I not only stopped reading the novel, I also decided it was time I revisited the topic. What’s the ripple effect, you ask? It’s the consequences that ripple out from story action. Imagine a pebble tossed into a pond, it hits the water and then ever widening ripples reach out to touch more area than the pebble itself touched. Instead of a pebble, think of a story element. For example, your main character is hiking through the woods and trips over a log and injures a shoulder. From that point forward, the injured shoulder must be included with that character until such time as the shoulder has healed. The hurt shoulder is the pebble. Rippling out from that injury are consequences: the pain, inability to use the shoulder as one should, wearing a brace, or other characters remarking on the inju...