Fiction on emsenn.net

Character and Conflict

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

¶Assumed audience

Reading level: comfortable reading fiction; has completed “Scene Construction” and “Point of View.”
Background: understands scene structure and POV choices.
Goal: learn to create characters who feel real and to generate conflict from character rather than from external imposition.

¶Character is what character does

Consider two introductions of the same character:

Description: “Maria was a generous person who cared deeply about her community.”

Point of View

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

¶Assumed audience

Reading level: comfortable reading fiction; has completed “Scene Construction.”
Background: understands scene structure, including how interiority functions within a scene.
Goal: learn to choose and control point of view as a craft decision.

¶What point of view decides

Here is the same moment rendered in three points of view:

First person: “I saw her reach for the envelope, and I knew — before she opened it, before she read a word — that everything was about to change.”

Scene Construction

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

¶Assumed audience

Reading level: comfortable reading fiction; has some experience writing stories.
Background: understands basic narrative terms — character, plot, setting.
Goal: learn to construct scenes that carry narrative weight.

¶Scene versus summary

Consider two ways of delivering the same event:

Summary: “Over the next three weeks, she gradually realized he had been lying about the money.”

Scene: “She found the receipt on Tuesday, folded inside his copy of Scientific American. Eleven hundred dollars to a jeweler she’d never heard of. She held it under the desk lamp, reading it twice, then folded it back along its original creases and slid it into the magazine.”