Image: one miniature heart is trapped in a jar while another sits outside it, longing for reunion.
One author learns that putting boundaries—such as genre expectations—around creativity can actually stimulate it rather than inhibit it ...
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Image: a tornadic waterspout bears down on a small island in the waters near Arendal, Norway.
Even if your plot is moving along nicely, a well-placed complication can jolt the action forward or sideways, or surprise ...
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Image: a woman looking like a fairy-tale princess, wearing an ornately-decorated white satin dress and with a copious head of curly white hair, reclines on a patch of flowers in a field.
If you approach a book with a writer’s eye, even the most pleasurable, light reading can teach you something that ...
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Image: a couple sits on the sofa, eating popcorn and watching television with rapt attention.
Shonda Rhimes’s Netflix series is a master class in amping up stakes and keeping viewers invested in the characters’ outcomes ...
AI-generated image with a historic and romantic aesthetic of a woman standing on the other side of a round dining table, looking out of a window.
Your characters’ movements and gestures in any given space must convey enough to paint the scene for readers without becoming ...
Image: a small wooden spoon holding grains of salt.
Authors should consider using AI for historical research—not as a replacement for primary sources, but as just another useful tool ...
Amid stacks of century-old photos in a display box can be seen one of a bearded man in a military uniform and one of a besuited teenage boy in a domestic living room.
Writers of both genres have to make decisions that somehow mold real people and events into a story with a ...