Set Scenes by Thinking Like a Director
Continuing her series of articles on using cinematic techniques in prose, C.S. Lakin offers more specific advice on mastering this approach. "The more you...
Do You Know Your Character’s Backstory?
Your characters may first appear to your reader on page 1 of your story, but in their world, they've lived full lives before we...
He Said, She Said: Finding a Better Way to ID Characters...
Writers love to debate the use of dialogue tags. Some eschew them altogether. Some argue that "said" is the only acceptable attribution, while others...
The Ethics of Portraying Historical Persons
The beauty of writing fiction is that we create our own worlds and people them with characters whose personalities and fates we (mostly) control....
Never Lose Sight of Your Character’s Goals
In a post on The Script Lab blog, David Wayne Young says that forgetting your character's main goal is the most dangerous pitfall in...
Not All Who Wander Are Lost
In an essay for Lit Hub, writer Rebecca Solnit extolls the virtues of novels and non-fiction works that take time arriving at their destinations.
"Some...
Verbal Conflict is Conflict
Most of us avoid conflict in our real lives, so sometimes it can be hard to create in our fiction. That's one reason writers...
Every Character Needs a Reason
Writers are often told to make every word count. We should avoid over-describing our characters or settings, and instead pick out the most important...
Use Maps and Documents to Recreate the Past
In a guest post on the A Writer of History blog, writer Justin Reed talks about his method for writing about places and people...
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...
