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Promotional banner for "Dancing in the Purple Rain" by Judy L. Mohr. The background shows a dark, rainy, neon-lit futuristic city with lightning in the sky and two large holographic Queen of Hearts figures on opposite sides. In the foreground on the right is the book cover, featuring a person in a purple hooded coat standing in the rain. Bold yellow text across the center reads: “JOIN THE RAIN DANCE…” Above it, smaller text says: “BEING SPECIAL CAN MAKE YOU A TARGET.”

It Took a Pandemic to Unlock to Story (Excerpt from ‘Dancing in the Purple Rain’ included)

It was a novel that took me many years to just get out of my head. And it wasn’t because of the inability to write, but rather I struggled to piece together the lie.

The opening scene (which you can read on my blog) was written back in 2017 (something like that). And I had a rough idea as to what I wanted the story to be. But I was stuck on the lie that my main character was being told.

Until the pandemic hit in 2020. Suddenly, the last piece of the puzzle I needed fell into place.

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The Inner Critic… Will they win?

Editing... Just when I thought I had finished with this manuscript, there it is again. The revisions go on, and on, and on, and on... Did I mention that they go on and on?

When you're writing, it's the inner critic that whispers sweet little nothings about self-doubt that just won't go away. If you're anything like me, you type so fast that sometimes your brain struggles to keep up; the spelling goes out the window and the autocorrect monster just gobbles up that carefully chosen word... without you noticing!

But the editor in me can't just let a new piece of writing go unchecked. I always go back and reread what I had written after a break (even a break as short as a toilet break). I see the punctuation errors, the grammar flaws, and the faults in the writing itself. I struggle in a big way to shut off the editor brain long enough to actually do any writing.

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The Pinch Points of a Story

For years, I have been talking about story structure (at least I have within my in-person writing groups). And for years, I've been trying to help writers understand that the antagonist is just as important to a story as the protagonist.

It all comes down to understanding both the role of the antagonist in a story and their nature. While I have written about this before, to quickly summarize, the antagonist is simply getting in the way of the protagonist achieving their goals, whatever those goals might be. But that doesn't make the antagonist a villain. In fact, the antagonist can be anything that is getting in the way, be that another character, the weather, societal norms, or the protagonist themselves.

When we're looking at story structure, there will be points within the story where the reader gets to see the antagonist in all their glory. Two critical beat points that are antagonistic beats are known as the pinch points.

Be advised that this blog post refers to beats and sections described in the Mohr Story Structure model.

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