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In his long-awaited report on the circumstances surrounding the United Kingdom’s decision to join forces with the United States and invade Iraq in 2003, Sir John Chilcot lists a number of failings on the part of the then-British leadership.

The post Moral responsibilities when waging war appeared first on OUPblog.

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The Story Idea Machine is a free online tool based on The Marshall Plan Novel Writing Software by Evan Marshall and Martha Jewett. It's designed to help writers develop a novel or story idea in five steps. The tool asks you to provide:

1. The name of your protagonist.
2. An inciting incident.
3. The protag's emotional reaction to the inciting incident.
4. The course of action the protag follow in response to the incident.
5. The hoped for outcome of that action.

You fill the information into blanks in a form, submit, and the Machine provides a story structure that looks something like the following:

As the story opens, Laura, the novel's lead character, discovers that her son Timmy has been kidnapped by his father, who's a cop. Laura feels as if the world has been turned upside down and is distraught to the point of madness.

Laura weighs all possible courses of action. Finally, after much careful consideration, Laura decides to go after Timmy without help from the police.

This is the only way Laura believes it will be possible to get Timmy back, the only course to take.

It is this goal that Laura will aggressively pursue, all the way to the end of the story.

The instructions suggest that you play with changing around the different pieces of information you enter in the form until you find a story that really appeals to you. They also point out that the story idea generated is "a brief, film-style 'treatment' for you to work from as you develop your novel."

I've never used writing software, but I've always wondered if it's helpful. After trying the Story Idea Machine, I'm still undecided.

On the plus side, it's free.

So what do you think? Is this helpful in giving you a jumping off point for writing? Is the 'treatment' close enough to a query letter or short synopsis to help provide some insight when it comes time to start marketing what you've written?

http://www.themarshallplanet.com/story_idea.htm

Happy plotting,

Martina

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Norman Moss's study of America and Britain in the Postwar years, Picking Up the Reigns, is reviewed in the current issue of Kirkus: "Journalist and historian Moss examines the years 1946-49, when the United States assumed the role of world leader. The end of World War II brought about many significant questions. Would Britain remain a world power? Would the Russians, America's uneasy wartime ally, remain friendly? Would Europe, devastated in nearly every way, simply go belly up? Would Germany revert to its warlike ways? Would America return to its traditional isolationism? We know now that the answer to all these questions was a resounding "no," but at the time the contours of any new world order remained unclear. Moss's nutshell version of the creation of the postwar world includes all the major events and cites all the crucial players. Though he alludes to other global episodes that played a role—Mao's assumption of power in China, the Soviet acquisition of the nuclear bomb, the fighting in Palestine between Arabs and Jews—the author focuses on Europe and the transfer of power from Britain to the United States. Moss offers a close-up view of the ravaged British economy, the war weariness of the people and the initial reluctance, then resignation, with which Britain, loath to think itself so weak, passed the baton to the Americans. Against the backdrop of the nascent Cold War, through the Marshall Plan and NATO and out of motives both humanitarian and self-interested, America inserted itself into European affairs with characteristic enthusiasm and cultural insensitivity. Moss adroitly conveys the mixture of relief, resentment, awe and dismay that this shift engendered, noting that while U.S. military, cultural and economic dominance abides, the mantle of global leadership still rests uneasily on American shoulders. A handy guide to the creation of a world order that remains, in many respects, undisturbed."

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