August 28, 2023
In a world shattered by a cataclysmic nuclear detonation, Kriska navigates the ruins of a fractured Earth as she flees from her arms dealing mother. Seeking sanctuary and a chance at a new life, she seizes an ill-advised opportunity to work alongside an ex-guild bounty hunter and unwittingly plunges herself into the treacherous battlefield of guild politics...
November 2, 2022
I have my major story plots pretty much set out, however I am having trouble with the opening scene. How do I decide which idea to use?
October 26, 2022
Dark Night of the Soul. One of the most emotionally devastating, yet brilliantly fulfilling moments in any story. Done correctly, this moment will move your readers to tears, then scoop them back up and fling them to untold emotional heights...
October 22, 2022
I used to struggle with my endings a lot. Part of that was because I didn’t have a really good idea of what I wanted to write, and the other part was because I had absolutely no grounding in story structure. Here’s the process I now use to figure out a good ending to my story. ...
October 17, 2022
Have you ever written a scene, only for your beta reader to be utterly confused for the first five paragraphs? Have you ever wondered whether there was an importance to the order in which you give details in your scene? Have you ever thought about how to structure your scene in order to immerse your reader as quickly as possible? If you have, then you need to learn about the five essential questions you need to answer in order to ground your scene. In this post, we will cover the essential questions, the order in which they should be answered, and the reasons behind that order.
September 19, 2022
The hook - the first line of your novel - is the single most important sentence in your story. Here are 2 don'ts and 1 do which will help you write a killer opening sentence.
September 9, 2022
Narrative lens and narrative distance are two of the tools a writer should always have on their tool belt.
August 31, 2022
Pacing is the rate at which your reader progresses through the story. If the pacing is so fast you have a hard time following what's going on, you start to get confused. When the pacing is slow, you ware waiting for the writer to get to the point. We don't read books just to wait around while the writer gives us pages and pages of scenery. We want action. We want change. We want plot.
August 25, 2022
Five tips to help you control narrative distance, whether you're writing in third person omniscient or third person limited.
August 18, 2022
If you’ve ever had your novel (especially genre fiction) critiqued by someone else, you’ve probably found that giant highlight which covers two-to-three paragraphs and is attached to a comment which only says “info dump”. The process of giving your readers all the information they need without “info dumping” is a hard one, but it doesn’t have to be. In this post, I’ll break down exactly what turns a paragraph of information into an “info dump”, how to avoid those things, and how to better dispense information throughout your novel.
August 17, 2022
Today's question goes like this. I've sunk over a year of my life into the draft of a novel. It's changed so much since it started. Now I'm to the point where I hate almost everything and want to take the world in a completely new direction...
August 15, 2022
Today's question goes like this. Throughout my whole story, my main character (MC) is headed toward one goal. Then, when they reach that goal, they "switch". to something else which has really been their goal all along...