Guest Post

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Embrace Complication to Develop a Can’t-Put-It-Down Narrative

Even if your plot is moving along nicely, a well-placed complication can jolt the action forward or sideways, or surprise your reader a little.
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Your Small Press Submission Checklist

If you’ve decided to seek a press that accepts unagented work, here’s a checklist to help you make a submission list you can feel confident in.
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Avoid, Persevere, Endure, Fight: 4 Goals for Unforgettable Opening Scenes

A strong story opening might introduce your character's normal world, while also making clear the untenable situation they must change.
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A Writer’s Secret Weapon: Add a Listening Pass to Your Editing Arsenal

Using a phone’s text-to-speech feature to read your story aloud while doing chores is a great way to catch errors that you might otherwise miss.
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Turn Fact Into Fiction—Without Hurting Someone or Getting Sued

Imagine a friend reveals a secret past so compelling that no novelist could resist turning it into fiction. Here’s how one author went about it.
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Boundaries Are About More Than Simply Carving Out the Time to Write

Boundaries within ourselves—our limits, standards, knowing which interactions are worthwhile—are as important as those we set with others.
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Why Your Flashbacks Aren’t Working

Like a genie in a bottle, flashbacks can be wonderful and terrible things. If not carefully controlled, flashbacks can get disastrously out of hand.
Photo of David Temple with the following quote from the interview: "The biggest thriller writers, like me, are just as nervous about succeeding, and just as scared of failing, all the while feeling neurotic that someone will find them to be a phony."

How to Gain Traction in Your Career: Q&A with The Thriller Zone’s David Temple

Podcast host, author, and actor David Temple discusses his shift from being in radio to writing novels, landing all-star interviews, and more.
Two screenshots comparing how Word's Navigation Pane would appear with different uses of Heading tags for a fiction manuscript. On the left is a version showing a non-hierarchical text list of the book's scenes, such as "Sara loses job", "Joe day 1 at vet clinic", "Backstory - choice of town" and "Backstory - choice of career". On the right is a version of the Navigation Pane with the same list of scenes but with heading tags applied so that some scenes are clearly nested within others. In this example, "Backstory - choice of career" is now nested within the "Joe day 1 at vet clinic" scene, and "Backstory - choice of town" is now nested within the "Sara loses job" scene.

How to Teach Word a Scrivener Trick

MS Word is great for collaboration using Track Changes, but can it offer drag & drop organization like Scrivener? Yes, with a little know-how.
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How Do You Know What Backstory to Include?

Backstory risks feeling clumsy or intrusive if it’s not directly relevant to the main, “real-time” story, and can stall forward momentum.
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Using Beat Sheets to Slant Your Memoir’s Scenes

Identifying your story’s turning point or “beats”, and the function each one serves, can help shape your material into a more focused narrative.
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Pay Attention to the Obsessive Workings of Your Mind

The headlines, facts, and observations that fuel your obsessions will seed your own work and grow it into the stories only you can tell.
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Writing the Other: 4 Not So Easy (But Doable!) Steps

There’s no formula for “perfect” characterization of marginalized people, but these tips can pave the way to better representation—and better writing!
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How and Where to Build Your Literary Community

Put your energy into people and places that are a good fit for you and your writing goals, and your literary community will thrive.
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The Case for Pursuing a Traditional Publishing Deal Without an Agent

Kicking off your publishing career with a small press is a great way to get to know the industry, build your author profile, and establish a reputation.
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3 Elements That Make Historical Romance Successful

If you approach a book with a writer’s eye, even the most pleasurable, light reading can teach you something that can enrich your own storytelling craft.
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Emotional Intimacy Between Characters Isn’t Just for Romance Novels

No matter what you’re writing, emotional intimacy between characters is important to creating authentic relationships on the page.
Image: in a black and white photo from what might be a an early motion picture, a young man in street clothes is being forced at sword point to walk the plank of a ship by a burly man in a pirate's costume and an all-woman crew.

Workshopper Beware: Navigating the Risky Waters of Writing Classes and Retreats

Sometimes, for some writers, workshops are magical. But attendees should be prepared for all of it—the magic, the toxic and the just-plain-weird.
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Tropes: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Just as a painter uses brushes and colors to blend and create, writers can experiment with tropes to make stories both familiar and refreshing.
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Author Platform Follows the Work

One author threw herself into platform building and engagement, only to lose sight of what really mattered—her writing.
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Scene, Summary, Postcard: 3 Types of Scenes in Commercial, Upmarket, and Literary Fiction

Understanding how to use them, and how to balance different types of scenes within a single narrative, is crucial for becoming a skilled storyteller.
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When—and Why—Reveals Don’t Work

It’s an author’s job to create questions that readers crave the answers to, but questions posed with unclear stakes or context can backfire.
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Set Up the Perfect Online Press Kit

Help journalists and bloggers to help you, by providing promotional materials about you and your books in flexible, user-friendly formats.
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Structure: The Safety Net for Your Memoir

The more faith you have in your story’s structure, the more you’ll become the safety net your reader is hoping for.
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3 Ways to Experiment with Memoir Structure to Improve Your Narrative Arc

Playing around with different storytelling forms during manuscript revision can lessen anxiety and reveal new possibilities.