It has taken me two years of concerted effort, reading several books, listening to many podcasts, and writing multiple novels and short...

How much negativity in your feedback can you stand? 10%... 20%? 90%? Every writer needs negative criticism. We need to be told no. We...

Who you link to for a Point of View (POV) is extremely important in storytelling. I am going to give an example of a very short piece...

We have talked before about good and bad dialogue. In summary, bad dialogue is dialogue that is long-winded, generic, tells us nothing,...

Crafting dialogue that sounds like real speech while still being purposeful and engaging can be difficult. Real conversations often...

We have talked about dialogue tags, action tags, and the setting dialogue inside of a larger context of the tale. For the moment I want...

In novels, song and verse are, or can be, a kind of dialogue that elevates the piece. In real life throughout human history we have sung....

I will never review a bad book on my site, because there is enough negativity in the world, and to be frank, I know how hard it is to...

Dialogue must have a point and a purpose. It must teach us something about the world, about the characters, about their emotions, the...

We've talked about dialogue before on this channel, but it turns out I have more to say! For the previous section of dialogue review...

The trope of dystopia is a fascinating and often chilling exploration of imagined societies characterized by oppression, suffering, and...

(Get it? Stuck in a loop?...) Time travel is a staple of many science fiction stories and rears its head though less frequently in...

(The title's reference if you've never heard it: REM Music Video.) Until now we have mostly discussed the tropes using fantasy examples,...

The trope of "prophecies and legends of long-gone times" has been a staple in fantasy literature for centuries going back literally to...

In fantasy literature, film, and other media, the reluctant protagonist is a common archetype. This character is often thrust into a...

The trope of the hidden lineage is very common in fantasy novels. I will prove to you with example that there is nothing inherently wrong...

The word trope can refer to any type of figure of speech, theme, image, character, or plot element that is used many times in particular...

The last step for any architectural writer is to begin to put even more meat into each scene. Like a painting, the scenes will be built...

To this point we have created scenes, characters, plots, outlines, and flow for our tale. The time has come to start adding the details....

A reader DM’ed me and said “a linear order is not as important to me as a 'meaningful order.'" My question is as follows: Since for most...