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Fictional Narrative Basics - Plot
Unit Completion Date: End of Week 5
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Revising for dramatic questions is very straightforward: Read your draft and make notes in the margin about what questions are raised and when they are answered. This is an exercise that is even more effective when you have someone else do this reading, because you may be too close to the material to do this effectively. Then for each question, first decide if it is really a dramatic question or not, by asking the following question:
Is this something I want my reader to know, or is it something that I want my reader to want to know?
If it's something you want your reader to know, and they don't, then you are distracting your reader by making them wonder about the wrong thing. These are not dramatic questions. In these cases, you simply go back and answer the question where it first arose to keep your reader focused.
If the question is one you do want your reader to think about, to worry over, then go back and figure out for how long, or over what part of the story the reader should be concerned with this question. In redrafts, the points at which most dramatic questions are raised are pushed closer to the beginning of stories to raise tension levels, and answers to these questions are pushed closer to the end, increasing the amount of time the reader has to worry over the answer.
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