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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.