Looking to brush up your writing skills or learn a new trick or two? You've come to the right place! Check back weekly for helpful tips and articles that make your writing better.
In my last post, we established a basic definition of a scene — specifically that each scene has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Next, we'll look at several key elements that every well-crafted scene in a novel should contain. These elements determine how effectively the scene will engage readers and advance the narrative.
When writing fiction, try ensure each scene contains the… read more
Fiction writers often strive to draw readers deep into the pages of their works. We know the best stories are the ones that make time seem to stop. So what makes a fictional world seem so real readers forget where they are? It’s in the details.
Whether your writing style is rich with description or close and efficient, well-placed details are what bring a world to life. A common… read more
Short stories are a great way for up-and-coming writers to get some publishing credits and start to build buzz around their names. But don’t be fooled into thinking that since short stories are well, shorter, they’re easier to write or get published.
As a slush reader for the Magazine of Fantasy and Science fiction, I can tell you editors get hundreds, even thousands of… read more
I'll preface this post by saying that if you write straight-up action or pure fluff because that's what you enjoy writing, you can probably skip this week's lesson.
Still here? Great, then let's look at theme from a fresh perspective. We'll start at the beginning.
Themes. They're core building blocks of nearly every story, but they're also the… read more
Stories are, fundamentally, all about conflict.
In most stories, your protagonist wants something—to change a law or the government itself, to avenge a death, to hook up with the cutie, to dispel a curse—and your antagonist usually wants something that is in direct opposition of whatever the protagonist wants.
From those opposing wants come the narrative conflict and thus… read more
The term worldbuilding conjures images of secondary worlds, far away planets, and magic systems, so much so that it has become ubiquitous with writing and game development, particularly within fantasy and science fiction genres. But what exactly is it? How does one go about building a world in the first place? And what do you mean, I should consider worldbuilding even when the… read more
Which of your characters is going to lie to your audience, and why?
Firstly, it's always important to remember that no baddie ever actually thinks they’re the baddie. They are always hero of their own tales, so create them to believe that. Take Loki, from the Marvel Cinematic Universe films. His character arc is a great example of someone going to increasingly more desperate ends… read more
Now that we’ve established what a point-of-view (POV) and a Narrative Voice are, let’s talk about Unreliable Narrators. These are narrators who, either because of the way they interpret the world, omissions in their story, or outright falsehoods and manipulation, lie to the reader.
In the first part of this series, I talked about the narrator as the driver of a story, the… read more
Once you’ve chosen your narrator, your next job is to figure out how they speak. Have a good long think about how their upbringing, social class, race, gender, sexuality, education, job, family home life, nation, etc. interconnect and serve to shape their morals, choices, preferences, and understanding of the world.
And once you’ve got that down, think about how all of those… read more
