by Doug Lewars One of the most interesting, albeit difficult things a writer can do is create a story that allows a reader to actually experience what the protagonist is feeling. In such a story, ‘telling’ is absolutely forbidden. ‘Showing’ becomes everything. Certainly as a writer you’ve been told over and over to… Read More How to Write Immersive Fiction
by S.E. Jones There’s a lot you can fix in a first draft. It’s why they’re first drafts. You can focus on character, world building, plot, inner cohesion, the writing, the flow, the pacing–the list goes on and on. If you were to try and do it all at once, you’d go mad.… Read More Revision: Making a Mess Less Complicated
by Ryan Lanz An author can’t get away from criticism, no matter the level of talent. How do you cope with it? And is there a way for it to be beneficial to you? It seems that writers take criticism more strongly to heart than others. I’ve thought about why that is. It’s… Read More How Do You Take Criticism?
by Whitney Carter Like a lot of my how to pieces here, this one came from my own developing of a fight scene. I used to be really good at writing them as a teenager. I used short, choppy and frequently fragmented sentences to develop the abrupt feel of a fight, choosing active words and… Read More How to Construct Gripping Fight Scenes
by Lauren Sapala When I was in college I took a class called Fantasy Literature, which I thought would be nothing but fun and actually turned out to be a lot of hard work. On the first day of class, our professor told us that we would be reading one book a week, and… Read More Why Are Query Letters and Synopses So $#!%ing Hard to Write?! (And How To Get Through It)
by Michael Cristiano So, you say you have a dream, Mr. Martin Luther King Jr. of prospective fiction (or nonfiction) writer. Well, so do I, and so do millions of others around the world. That is to write a book, but not just any damn book: a book that will be good enough… Read More How to Write a Novel That Will Actually Be Worthy of Publishing
Everyone always says to be original in your writing, but are we oversimplifying things? Can anyone be original anymore, and what are the pitfalls in striving for originality? “Originality is merely an illusion.” -Isaac Bashevis
