Fiction Craft

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The Crucial Ingredient Your Story May Be Missing

If you’re hearing that your story lacks structure or impact, you might be missing the interconnected cohesion of plot, stakes, and character.
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The Case for Shrinking Your Novel

Even experienced novelists overwrite. Here are five insights about ruthlessly cutting a manuscript—and why that’s a good thing.
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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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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.
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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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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.
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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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Write Where You Know

Whether you choose a real or fictional location, the more detail and depth you can infuse into your setting, the better you’ll draw readers into your story.
Image: In Cairns, Australia, two Welcome Swallows stand on a rope, one with its beak open and facing the other, as if speaking angrily, while the other looks somewhat taken aback.

Developing Antagonism in Your Story

The more clearly you develop and articulate antagonism in your story, the more your protagonist’s struggle and victory will shine.
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How to Turn Real Family Stories Into Compelling Historical Fiction

The stories we carry from our families may seem ordinary, but fictionalizing them can honor our roots and keep them alive for future generations.
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Readers Are Fascinated by Truth in Fiction—and It Matters

Books might be marketed as fiction, but it’s the truth and possibility thereof that intrigues us and offers understanding and connection.
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Mining for Theme in Children’s Books

A hazard of writing for young readers is the temptation to craft stories with a lesson, when more richness might result from finding your theme.
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The Villain Is the Hero of Their Own Story

Since villains usually consider themselves heroes, they can also go through the same stages heroes do—with some important variations.
Image: photo of a darkened interior gallery in which people observe Luke Jerram's art installation titled Museum of the Moon, a highly-detailed and illuminated scaled replica of the moon which hovers in mid-air.

Using AI to Explore Scientific Realism and Build Story Bibles for Fiction Writing

A sci-fi writer explores how AI can help keep her scenarios grounded in reality and maintain a story bible for world-building consistency.
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Plot, Character, or Situation: Your Story’s Entry Point Determines Next Steps

Knowing which facet most drives the story you want to tell can help you determine next steps and avoid the most common manuscript missteps.
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What Isn’t Said Still Screams: Writing Subtext in Horror Fiction

Emerging writers often focus on plot and action—both essential!—but the true pulse of horror comes from what festers just beneath the surface.
Image: a young woman wearing handcuffs sits at a table, staring blankly at the man sitting across from her who has a gun at his side.

How POV Affects Character Inner Life

Tips from a career editor on how the type of POV you choose affects the way you give readers access to your characters’ thoughts and feelings.
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How a Misbelief About Love Can Be a Guiding Light for Your Romance Characters

Understanding what holds your characters back from loving or being loved fully will equip you to write a romance with a compelling arc.
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How Writing Romance Has Made Me More Creative

One author learns that putting boundaries—such as genre expectations—around creativity can actually stimulate it rather than inhibit it.
Image: The author’s graphically-designed table representing the story blueprint of his novel The Corpse Bloom, showing forty color-coded blocks that identify the book’s scenes, beats, characters, settings, timeline, and plot structure.

A Novel Blueprint for Building Your Book

One author finds that using digital tools to create a visual story grid is the trick he needs to crystallize his ideas and never miss a beat.
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Sensitivity Reading in Speculative Fiction: Why It Matters More Than You Think

No matter what story we read, we bring ourselves with it. That’s why sensitivity should be the forethought, not an afterthought, in our world-building.