Guest Post

Image: a woman sits at a desk, marking up a printout of a screenplay using green and red ink.

Edit Your Book As If It’s a Screenplay

A writer’s script-editing experience helped fix her novel’s problems with pacing, flat characters, and scenes that didn’t propel the story.
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Crafting Ethical and Moral Dilemmas in Crime Fiction

In crime fiction, the most powerful moments often aren’t about car chases or shootouts—they’re about impossible choices.
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Using the Workplace to Add Depth to Your Novel

Using the workplace as more than a backdrop can supercharge the stakes, conflict, and character development of your fiction.
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How a 100 Rejections Challenge Prepared Me for Life’s Biggest Rejection

A slew of literary rejections helped one writer develop the perseverance needed when a failed marriage left her urgently seeking a new job.
Image: The view in a car's driver's side rear-view mirror, showing the mountain and winding road that represent the challenging journey the driver's completed.

What I Got Wrong About Memoir and What I Now Understand About the Genre

An author reconsiders her biases, finding the best memoir writing to be courageous, complex, and capable of transforming others and ourselves.
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How Revising My Novel While Querying Helped Me Win a Book Award

When agents suggest further revision, we might need time and distance to see our MS through their eyes—but doing the work can pay dividends.
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What Makes Character Voice Memorable: Emotion

This excerpt from a new craft book by Jordan Rosenfeld explores the many ways our fictional characters manifest their internal emotions.
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Before You Say Yes: What Writers Need to Know About Anthology Offers

Learn how to find and assess anthology opportunities, which offer short fiction authors income and visibility by sharing audiences across contributors.
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How I Secured a Big Five Publishing Deal with Almost No Social Media Platform

Learn how one author’s publishing “fairy tale” hides years of struggle, with practical lessons to unlock your own resilience.
Image: overhead view of a woman seated on the floor and knitting a scarf, with multicolored strands of yarn chaotically strewn all over her legs.

Make Good Knots: How Learning to Knit Saved My Novel

Learning to knit renewed one author’s confidence, allowing her to take a risk revising a manuscript that was already out on submission.
Image: collage of screenshots of three book prologues, and a photo of gold type reading "What is past is prologue" painted onto wooden boards mounted into the window of a brick building.

Prologues That Work and Why

Prologues get a bad rap as backstory or info dumps but, done well, they can intrigue readers and ignite interest in the story to come.
Image: Scrabble tiles arranged on a white background to spell the words "Who do you say I am"

Coach Your Characters: A Life Coach’s Toolkit Offers a New Lens

Life coaches help clients gain insights about how we shape our own life stories, and the same tools can be used to create richer characters.
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“All Others”: The Memoir Writers Who Keep Going

Jane’s reporting has shown that unknown authors still land memoir deals, a fact which gave one writer the will to persevere—and succeed.
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Why Your Book Isn’t Enough (and Why That’s Good News)

If we view platform-building as part of a mission to transform lives, not just sell books, the possibilities for engagement are endless.
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Good Intentions Aren’t Enough in Publishing Deals: How Creators Can Protect Themselves

What every creator should know before signing a contract—protect your work, your time, and your well-being.
Photo of author Greg Cope White with a quotation from the interview: "Write the story you want to tell. Don’t reverse-engineer it to fit the perceived market. Your story has value because it’s your story. Authenticity is what gets noticed and what holds up when the cameras roll."

How a Memoir Became Netflix’s Boots

The author of The Pink Marine discusses his publishing path, writing for books versus screen, what development execs look for, and more.
Image: an illustration of human brains, colored pink and arranged in neat rows, except for one which is colored light blue.

Discovering My Brain’s Native Language

An AuDHD writer considers where her mind’s fragmentary and circular style of expression fits in a paradigm of linear storytelling.
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Knit One, Revise Two: What Being a Knitter Taught Me About Writing

Knitting and writing both teach us that mistakes can be instructive. Every dropped stitch, every tangled subplot is an invitation to learn.
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How Creativity Survives in an AI Monoculture

One writer suggests that the antidote to ‘AI Slop’ is to bring our endlessly eccentric selves, resulting in idiosyncratic, unique outputs.
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What Does It Mean to Have a Compelling Voice in Your Story?

In storytelling, voice can refer to three different elements: character voice, narrative voice, and author voice—and they can often overlap.
Image: a copy of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice is open to the title page, surrounded by a teacup and dried roses.

Writing Lessons from Jane Austen: Cause and Effect in Pride and Prejudice

While many 19th century novels have fallen by the wayside, Austen’s continual appeal may be understood in the way she built her plots.
Image: A to-do list on which the only item written is "mainly procrastinate…"

If Book Marketing Feels Miserable, Read This Now

Most of us feel unskilled at marketing, but real resistance to it might reveal an emotional pattern that protects us when visibility feels risky.
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3 Publicity Mistakes Debut Authors Make (and How to Avoid Them)

It’s hard to execute book publicity perfectly the first time around, but there’s a lot you can do to give your project the best shot at visibility.
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Breaking Bread: The Role of Food in Building Character

Food is a powerful storytelling element that can help develop characters, and a great tool for putting ‘show, don’t tell’ into practice.
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How to Reconnect with a Draft You No Longer Want to Write

If the manuscript you once felt passionate about has fallen silent, here’s why this may be happening and how to gently find your way back.