From the course: Writing: The Craft of Story
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Example: What is a story?
- Let's take a look at the kind of idea that writers often start with and I'll show you how with just a few tweaks we can take it from not so great to really stellar. It's all a matter of following our definition of story. Here's an example of the first draft of a story idea. - [Author Voiceover] My novel is about an aspiring actress who doesn't think that her father ever loved her. He was a famous actor and all he ever cared about was his work. He was always gone throughout her childhood. He was almost never there for birthdays or when she was in a performance herself. And worse, he's started to get all these plum roles for older men, but he's made her so insecure, she can't get a job at all. - Let's run this through our story definition to see how it holds up. The story is how what happens, that's the plot. What's a plot? A plot is what happens in the story. And what's happening in this story? Nothing. No plot. No story. So let's…
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