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If I’ve gotten away from how to use setting, it’s because the effects of noticing are profound. What is noticed depends on who does the noticing. Cold weather affects someone not used to cold weather far more than it affects someone who is used to it. A strange man in an otherwise empty parking lot…

Take, for example, a domestic drama about a couple falling apart. They fight, they break up. They go their separate ways. One of them falls ill and dies. The other goes to the wake, to remember their good times. At the wake the body stands up and starts eating brains. Now it’s a zombie story.

Yo…

Writing other characters with similar but different types in fact helps make each type stand out. One of the best ways to emphasize the heart of gold the asshole has is to introduce an asshole without a heart of gold (and/or the “too nice” character who gets stuck in the friend zone). The easiest w…

nother common rags-to-riches plot is the marriage plot (see: Cinderella). Typically in this case, a poor straight woman becomes the love object of a rich straight man and thereby gains wealth. Here the world also fails to be changed. This world suggests women should become sexual objects to rich me…

What tone tells us is that if fiction regularly presents a difficult world, it also indicates how to make sense of that world—and for whom the world is difficult. Whether positive or negative, fiction always says something about how we live, and not in an individual sense but a contextual one. When…