"All I Ever Wanted to be Was a Storyteller" Bruce Coville part 1

Class with Bruce Coville, of Into the Land of the Unicorns fame. I've never read any of his books but I can compliment his terrific class on plot and character.
Most often books are labeled as character or plot driven. According to Bruce, one with out the other is like a coin with one side-it can't exist.
According to Coville:
*The best stories from the beginning of time partake equally between the female/male; it was how Dickens and Shakespeare wrote-they created incredible male and female characters with lots of action.
*Plot imposes discipline on the disorder of life. When someone re-tells an event, when it is a great event they often say, "And it was almost like a story." As humans we crave, even live for a good story because it is a basic desire of the human race.

A good plot:
*brings closure
*has a perfect ending-both a surprise and the inevitable, but not a coincidence.
There are rules for using coincidence-use only at the beginning of the story, never at the end. The further coincidence in the story, the more unbelievable.
*REaders are becoming less and less tolerant of conicidence. And fiction is held to a higher standard of believability than real life.

A good story consists of:
The HA-a belly laugh-not a joke- but a laugh that grows out of story itself-when a bully gets come-uppance, situations where we think of the perfect thing the next day),
The WA-a tear, kill the dog, most endangered character in books-tear of joy or relief-because something fills your heart so much that it has to come out of your eyes. Third kind of tear-tear of personal connection-the right person who needs to hear that thing at that time) The right story at the right time at the right moment can be an arrow to the heart that allows something to be pierced and released

The YIKES- a gasp of surprise—formula-where the world of the story seems right-a great turn-love that surprise.