Choosing a Subject: Resolution

The resolution of a work is critical for its success.

The theme and message of the work need to carry through to the end of a story. Even for fiction writers who focus on mere entertainment, a resolution provides satisfaction to the audience.

Without a resolution, a story feels incomplete, and that’s undesirable in all but very specific circumstances.

This is the fourth part of my series on how to narrow down subjects for writing (see the rest through this link).

Bubbles and Scenes

One of the fundamental differences between most writing and creative writing is that creative writing has a much different purpose.

While both convey functional information, the goal in creative writing is to provide an artistic expression beyond the mere literal events.

If you’ve been following my bubble method (click here for an archive of posts), you’ll know that it’s a light and fractal organization method I use to help stay on task and hit every point I need to hit.

But keeping things straight only gets you half-way to solid organization in creative writing.

For that, you need to think between the bubbles.

Choosing a Subject: Crisis

The crisis is the ultimate point of tension in a literary work. It’s when the big bad guy and the big good guy face off, and to the victor go the spoils.

If you want to write a story, you need a good crisis point.

In fact, when you leave a story feeling unfulfilled, it’s almost certainly because the climactic moment of the story didn’t live up to its role.

This is the third part in my series about narrowing down subjects for a creative writing project. Previously I discussed this with the initiation and development of a story.

Bubbles: Saving the Orphans

A couple weeks ago, I laid out my preferred method of organization. I use what I call a “bubble method” derived from a few different theories regarding text structure.

In case you missed it, here’s a link to it, and a brief overview:

  1. I use my system because it’s fast and simple.
  2. Although originally developed for nonfiction, it’s something that I’ve continued using as I move into more creative writing.
  3. It’s built around flexible fractal compartmentalization.

In short: you put each of your ideas into bubbles as a two-dimensional outline, with each bubble representing the content you need to make a point and the point itself. You put bubbles within other bubbles when they are sub-points of a larger point.