What’s in a Character Name? Sometimes, the Success of Your Story
The naming of things is important. God gave Adam the task of naming the creatures of the world. Magical beings withhold their true names,...
A Call to Action: Your Story’s Inciting Incident
Every story has to start somewhere. You can start with your protagonist waking up in the morning or looking at themselves in the mirror...
Leveraging Your Characters’ Biases
In their latest podcast, the Writing Excuses hosts and guest Fonda Lee suggest ways you can leverage your characters' biases in your novel. Regardless...
Turning a Great Idea into a Great Story
Memorable novels start with a great premise. What if religious fundamentalists took over the United States and forced women into a form of sexual...
Consider Essayists as Models for Connection
In a post on the Killzone blog, PJ Parrish says that fiction writers can learn lessons from great essayists about connecting with their readers. Essay...
Research: Knowing When Enough is Enough
In a post on the Stage 32 blog, S.K. Valenzuela offers advice for avoiding the two most common pitfalls of research: info-dumping and procrastination....
Start with What You Love
We admit to being intimidated by the amount of work involved in writing historical fiction. From choosing an era and topics and characters to...
How is Story Structure Like a Mixtape?
Structure. Is it an arc, with rising action and a climax? A river that meanders from its source to its ending? A spiral? An...
3 Tips for Creating an Immersive Reader Experience
As writers, we're told that we should strive to "immerse" our reader into the story, to get them so caught up that they feel...
The Value of Research: Reimagining Historical Figures
Writers of historical fiction often discover interesting tidbits to flavor their novels or events that alter the direction of their plot. Sometimes, they learn...
