The Creative Writing Blog

If a novel is one person's moral journey towards acceptance of their place in the universe, then the plot is contrived to give them a gift or gifts to help them on their way to which he or she is particularly ill-suited.

Nail those  - the human flaw and the perfectly unsuitable circumstances  - and you've got the essential irony that powers a novel.

Start with character-driven irony.

A disaster story brings these into sharp dramatic relief. It loves irony: the hero of the Jaws movie is afraid of water.

But there's more -  it's not the hero's character flaw that's so important in the grand scheme of a disaster story, so much as the hero or heroine's gift.

While a novel is usually propelled by what the main character wants, in a disaster story it's all about what they don't want to happen.

The hero's gift.

The starting point is the hero's strong suit, his or her particular aptitude. This means he or she is particularly well-suited...