Robert Russell said that there’s no secret to being great. You simply do little things in a great way, everyday.
What are the little things that writers can do in a great way, everyday?
For starters, we can learn to master the scene. It’s the basic building block of story and, relative to the size of a novel, is fairly small.
But we can drill down even further. Each scene is made up of five elements which Shawn Coyne, the creator of Story Grid, calls the five commandments of storytelling; the inciting incident, the progressive complications (which build to a turning point), the crisis, the climax and the resolution.
What would happen if we took the time to write these little things in a great way, everyday? How would the quality of our writing improve? How would that help us be great at what we do?