Originally posted on Life in the Realm of Fantasy:
Some aspects of writing craft were never taught in school. I know! I was shocked to discover this too. Many people learn these things through getting their MFA, but the rest of us must educate ourselves. One concept I discovered through reading is how my favorite…

Source: A New Summer Class: Thrill Me, But Make Me Weep

“No stakes means no urgency means a stillborn story,” claims Benjamin Percy writing in Thrill Me. Percy is full of advice on how to take anemic fiction and give it spine, to pack in more suspense. But in the end, so what? If you can’t write stories with characters  capable of bringing us to tears, […]

Originally posted on Life in the Realm of Fantasy:
All works of fiction, no matter what their genre have several commonalities. Protagonists and side characters begin in a comfortable place. An incident/event occurs, throwing them out of what they know and into disarray. This is the inciting incident. Once they recover from the first stumbling…

Source: How To Achieve Satisfying Reversals

How do you bring a story to a believable reversal without the ending feeling tacked on? There are many kinds of stories, obviously. Some answer resolve conflicts, but not all lend themselves to closure. In literary stories we know that often dilemmas do not resolve and life goes on. But I would argue that even […]

Originally posted on Life in the Realm of Fantasy:
It’s been about a year since I last discussed what have been termed “weed words.” Certain words and phrases don’t add to the narrative and only serve to increase the wordiness. Used too freely, they separate the reader from the experience. In my first draft, these words…