The Narrative Significance of Place
Guest post by Mariia Kukkakorpi. Have you ever considered how places influence storytelling, shape the atmosphere, or evoke the reader’s…
Pacing Tips for Fiction
Strong pacing is critical in a fictional story, but it’s one of the hardest elements to understand and master. That’s…
Balancing “Showing” with “Telling” in Fiction
It’s the golden rule of fiction: show, don’t tell. But it’s easier said than done. Show too much, and you’ll…
Backstory Tips and Tricks
You’ve spent hours, maybe months, developing a rich background for each of your characters and the world they inhabit. As…
5 Ways to Strengthen Weak Writing
Every writer has to work on strengthening the construction of their sentences and paragraphs. No one’s writing is perfect, but…
Starting Your Scenes with a Bang!
Openings are a science unto themselves, be they openings for an entire book, for a chapter, or for a scene….
7 Tips to Avoid Overwriting
Repetition. Redundancy. Useless words. All fiction writers fall into the trap of overwriting. We’re lured by the desire to be…
The 2 Elements You Need to Catch Readers in Your Net
Our goal as writers is to get readers to go on an emotional journey. Readers read to care, to feel,…
How to Use Setting to Reveal Character
All of us are impacted by setting. Every place we’ve been has made an imprint on us in some way,…