Creative Exercise:

List five of the most important moments in your story. Next to each moment, note the setting. Then, in a third column, write down your character’s primary emotion in each scene. How does the setting reinforce that emotion?

 

Something to Think About:

1. Was your hook intriguing enough to allow you to then slow down the action and thoughtfully introduce and deepen your characters?

 

2. During the First Act, have you developed the salient personality points, motivations, and beliefs of your prominent characters?

 

3. Have you fleshed out the pertinent points of your setting, so you don’t have to slow down in the Second Act to explain things?

 

4. Will readers have developed a bond with the characters by the end of the First Act?

 

5. Has your First Act made clear what the characters stand to lose in the coming conflict?

 

6. Is every scene in the First Act a domino that knocks into the next domino/scene, building inexorably to the First Plot Point?

 

Resources:

• “8 ½ Character Archetypes You Should Be Writing,” K.M. Weiland

 

• “Are You Utilizing Ugly Settings?,” K.M. Weiland

 

• “Are You Revealing Your Story’s Stakes at the Ideal Moment?,” K.M. Weiland

 

• “Screenplays, the Three-Act Structure and Why You Would be Mad to Ignore It,” Edoardo Nolfo

 

• “Defending Jacob: Interview with thriller author William Landay,” Dorothy Thompson