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Chuck Wendig Critiques Your Story

·211 words·1 min
Articles humor writing

Chuck Wendig serves up a thoughtful and accurate critique of your current work in progress, which he has not read. While doing so, he highlights the key points of progression that should occur in a story. Namely, illustrating how things keep getting worse until your protagonist figures out a real solution.

A story should look more like:

  1. HEY LOOK A PROBLEM

  2. I’M GONNA JUST GO AHEAD AND FIX THAT PROBLEM AND –

  3. OH GOD I MADE IT WORSE

  4. OH FUCK SOMEBODY ELSE IS MAKING IT WORSE TOO

  5. WAIT I THINK I GOT THIS –

  6. SHIT SHIT SHIT

  7. FUCK FUCK FUCK

  8. IT’S NOT JUST WORSE NOW BUT DIFFERENT

  9. EVERYTHING IS COMPLICATED

  10. ALL IS LOST

  11. WAIT, IS THAT A LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL?

  12. IT IS BUT IT’S A VELOCIRAPTOR WITH A FLASHLIGHT IN ITS MOUTH

  13. WAIT AN IDEA

  14. I HAVE BEATEN THE VELOCIRAPTOR AND NOW I HAVE A FLASHLIGHT AND MY PROBLEMS ARE SOLVED IN PART BUT NOT TOO NEATLY BECAUSE TIDY, PAT ENDINGS MAKE STORY JESUS ANGRY, SO ANGRY THAT STORY JESUS GIVES EVERYONE MOUTH HERPES

Chuck Wendig, In Which I Critique Your Story (That I Haven’t Read)

The whole article is full of great advice, but it was the story structure outline above that had me grinning.