Fiction Craft

Worry less about creating a first sentence that will shock and awe, and more about drawing readers into the story one link of the chain at a time.

Struggling with the plot of your current work-in-progress? Maybe one of these tried and true solutions will do the trick for you.

It's easier to write beginnings and endings but often the middle is left sagging—not out of the lack of skill or care, but out of confusion.

Spooky season is the perfect time to write that Gothic fiction tale you've been brewing. Learn the key genre conventions and how to outline your story.

An in era of episodic adventure stories, Sense and Sensibility offered a novel with what modern readers would recognize as plot structure.

Whether your writing partner is your spouse, best friend, or a colleague, here are some tips on setting expectations and sharing the work.

Interiority adds emotional context for what your characters experience. Learn when interiority is appropriate, and how much to use.

Point of view is rarely the first storytelling element authors focus on in creating their stories, but it can arguably be the most important.

In general, we don’t turn to fiction for stories about perfect people. What really makes us care is understanding another’s vulnerabilities.

Retellings, like any genre, come with their own characteristics and conventions to honor the original text and meet reader expectations.

Believable magic systems will not only keep fantasy writers organized but will also help readers stay more immersed in the story’s world.

As an author, what steps can you take to write a book that the vast majority of readers will want to read all the way through?

Choosing a name, either for a real human or a fictional one, involves a blend of logic and intuition and can feel deeply consequential.

As an early architect of the novel form, Austen’s use of a unifying thematic question contributed to the development of long-form narratives.

Whatever settings you choose, they need to align with your theme, support the plot, and help define your characters.

When we show our character’s cognitive dissonance—wrestling with conflicting beliefs—readers can’t help but relate and empathize.

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.

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.

Like a genie in a bottle, flashbacks can be wonderful and terrible things. If not carefully controlled, flashbacks can get disastrously out of hand.

A brief but super-powered lesson from one of our recent webinars about the how to avoid overly coy and "mysterious" backstory in fiction.

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

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.

No matter what you’re writing, emotional intimacy between characters is important to creating authentic relationships on the page.

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

Understanding how to use them, and how to balance different types of scenes within a single narrative, is crucial for becoming a skilled storyteller.