Learn Show Don’t Tell from Movies and TV
In a new post on The Script Lab, David Wayne Young offers advice on writing visually, a required skill for screenwriters, but also one...
Humor: A Vital Element for Any Story
Dying is easy. Comedy is hard. In an essay for Lit Hub, Maeve Higgins says that comedy is an intrinsic aspect of life and...
There Is No Easy Path to Authenticity
Intelligent readers can spot a phony story a mile away. Even in a world where staged pranks and heavily edited "candid" surprise videos get...
Unwanted Pregnancies in the Middle Ages
If you're writing historical fiction or fantasy set in the past or any kind of fiction where your protagonists don't have access to modern...
11 Extinct Foods
An article on Mental Floss examines 11 foods - animal and vegetable - that have gone extinct. If you're looking for an interesting detail...
Exploring the Rich Ground of Catastrophe Fiction
Writers can explore many kinds of conflict in their stories, often showing characters in conflict with one another or some aspect of a cruel...
Sherlock Holmes: The Perfect Hero for Patische
Patische (n): An artistic work in a style that imitates that of another work, artist, or period.
Now that we've got that out of the...
When Everything Hurts: Using Physical Pain to Show Emotional Trauma
As writers, we accept that we have to put our characters through the wringer. Difficulty makes for a more compelling story and helps our...
The Importance of Revision
During an interview with the DIY MFA podcast, William Germano, professor of English at Cooper Union and former editor-in-chief at Columbia University Press, discusses...
History’s Greatest Jinx?
One man was present at the assassinations of both President Abraham Lincoln and President James Garfield, some sixteen years apart.
Before reading his extraordinary circumstances,...
