Category Archives: Writing Advice

Studies show that making meaningful progress toward big goals is best served by focusing on the small steps that will get us there.

Developmental editors, critique partners, sensitivity readers, friends—feedback comes from different people, for different reasons, at different times.

You can get your readers behind a character they don’t want to grab a beer with—if you allow enough humanity to show through.

We’re often told to read the best books first and apply their lessons to our own work. Here’s a wrinkle: Books you don’t like can be great teachers too.

When used properly, flashbacks can be illuminating. When used haphazardly, they detract from the narrative and leave the reader confused (or worse, bored).

The human condition in its alienation, pain, and joy yearns for a faithful scribe. Memoir offers readers that ultimate safe harbor: the knowledge that they are not alone.

Is your reader being told a story, or experiencing it by your protagonist’s side? When revising your novel, here are four important red flags to look for.

Just like your hero, your villain should be fully three-dimensional: fallible, flawed, and complete with a backstory that explains being so downright nasty.

A book is often the product of teamwork. The ability to revise—to accept feedback and apply it with diligence and insight—is essential to success.

In conversation we describe dialogue simply—”She said,” “He asked”—but writing enables a broader palette. How do we decide which words to use, or not use?

It may be on the wane for reasons ranging from linguistic evolution to feminism, but one writer says exclamation point usage is a simple kindness.

Like trying to outrun a semi bearing down in your rear-view mirror, writing serially for release in real-time can be both exhilarating and exhausting.

When you’ve taken your work as far as you can, a manuscript evaluation can address problems before you begin querying and submitting.

There’s a big difference between writing a book for ourselves and writing one for the reader. In this guest post, nonfiction coach and memoirist Tanja Pajevic offers five steps to keep in mind when crafting your story.

Perspective—gained from time and distance—can make the difference between an airing of grievances and a memoir that expresses deeper, universal truths.

Taking the time to add the skills of creative imagery to your writer’s toolbox will help you become a master of the emotional craft.

Writers always seek to produce a unique story—but this can lead to creating a character or story that is “different” sheerly for the sake of, well, being different.

You need readers to love your novel—and finish it. Author H.R. D’Costa explains how story stakes can help you grow readership and sales.

Narrative is a form that can be learned, like a dance move or a golf swing. Alan Gelb breaks down narrative into four elements: The Once, The Ordinary vs. the Extraordinary, Conflict and Tension, and The Point.

Value is subjective, but readers like all consumers seek it. In this guest post, author Paulette Perhach explains how writers whose work earns income match their own sense of value to what their readers value.

Realism has its role, but don’t let it bog down your novel. The right balance of brevity, helpful details, and smooth flow preserves the story’s dramatic tension and keeps the pages turning. In this guest post, bestselling author Jordan Rosenfeld outlines the pitfalls that can bore your reader, and how to avoid them.

Successful writing for audio formats requires awareness of how a listener’s needs differ from a reader’s. In this guest post, playwright and fiction writer Jules Horne describes and illustrates key ways a writer can achieve listener attunement to the story.

Use of beta readers is widespread, but surprisingly little has been written about how writers actually use them and how they help—or if they do.

If a character is repressing an emotion, real-world behaviors can show it. Readers will catch on because they’ll recognize their own attempts to hide their feelings.

While it’s possible to write memoir from your own authorial POV (because you know more today than you did then), the most engaging memoirs are ones in which the author sticks to their POV at the moment of events.

Before writing a scene, determine what type of scene it’s going to be. Will it be a narrative scene? High-action scene? Low-energy dialogue scene?

Plot and structure books aren’t necessarily calling for adherence to a formula—in fact, they warn against it. Here are 3 story planning methods to consider.

Misconceptions pervade popular science fiction. Many, if not most, could have been avoided if the writers spent some time doing research.

Learn how to simplify the writing process for how-to books and write them in a way that provides maximum value in an information-filled world.

Few of your readers care about what you know, no matter how many years you have spent accumulating that wisdom. They care about what they need or want to understand.

Subplots help you pace your story and keep the tension rising. Unfortunately, the name “subplots” wrongly suggests they are somehow inferior or substandard.

On the whole, stories are about change. And scenes are a boiled down, less intense, mini-story. They should do the same thing your global story does: upset the life value of the character and put them on a path to try and restore it.