"Only you can ..." In the realm of fantasy literature, few tropes are as ubiquitous and polarizing as the "Chosen One." This archetype,...

You are more than you think. You can do more than you believe you can. When you were born you couldn’t count. You couldn’t read. You...

It is a question I have had to ask for two series of books specifically that I have read since I was a child. Margaret Wies and Tracy...

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...

Oxford definition: (noun) the study of historical writing. In other words, historiography is the study of the history and methodology of...

I could have been a writer, a professional athlete, a musician, a doctor, an actor, a chef, a business owner, a scientist, a teacher… If...

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...

Most everywhere I look this quote or some variation of it is attributed to Plato or Philo or some other ancient Greek. Some sites...

My wife and I are not at home right now. We are staying a few hundred miles away to help take care of family. Our habits are uprooted,...

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

Nothing I say in this post is new. Nothing I manage to find as wisdom hasn’t been learned by millions of men and women who have come...

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...

I don’t know if this is for readers, writers, motivation, and everyone in general. I have a lot to say in a short space about the word...

Before we keep going, we need to take a moment to remember where we are in the process. In the previous six sections where we learned the...

When are you reading too much junk food?  I’m not sure. I thought about it when I was looking at the stack of books I have up in queue...

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” I...

The time has come to kill your precious work. You have spent this time generating ideas for a world you want to write in. You have...

A little while back we reviewed the reading algorithms doom loop. If you haven’t seen it take a look here or some context. I wanted to...

The Fall has come and gone. Civilization's great cities like crumbling citadels have begun leaning toward decay inevitable wherever such...

Theme or first cuts? I debated which order is considered “correct,” to talk about these in if we are trying to be formulaic. Theme, or...