The publishing world is not a friendly place. I hope I've impressed this upon you by now - this is an insular, name-driven world where...

It seems like I went and forgot that this is a writing site, didn't I? Let's fix that. My opinion on flash fiction has changed quite a...

So you've finished the first draft of the novel that's definitely going to be a bestseller, just like all the others. Get yourself a...

So you've decided to write a manuscript. Good for you - you're starting on a noble path to disappointment that many other have already...

In the context of fiction, exposition is writing intended to explain something - some detail of the setting, a plot point, a character's...

Here are the collected short story posts as of October 4th, 2020. This post may be updated if new posts are added. Writing a Short Story:...

Pressed for time? Listen to the post instead! Some authors can sit down and bang out a novel in a few sittings with no help at all,...

Pressed for time? Listen to the post instead! Short story markets offer great potential for new writers, even if they can be hard to...

We spend too much enough on negative talk, I think. There's a tendency to focus on failure over success, on the worst over the best, on...

Story length is an important factor for anyone writing for short fiction markets, which often have specific word count requirements. So...

We've done character voice and we've done science fiction, so now it's time for the fantasy writing prompts. But since so many people are...

Pressed for time? Listen to the post instead! Aspiring writers can get tunnel vision. People get so focused on getting a novel published...

I'll admit that I'm not the biggest fan of writing prompts. Better to find your own ideas and then get help developing them into...

Here are the collected novel writing posts as of November 10th, 2020. This post may be updated if new posts are added. How to Start and...

Back in the day, I posted stories that I couldn't sell to my blog, inviting readers to judge for themselves if they are truly as bad as...

Dialogue is one of the hardest, most important, most rewarding aspects of long-form writing. Whereas many editors of short fiction...

An epistolary novel is a work framed as a series of documents, conventionally an exchange of letters or a diary. These days, the...

Yes, I know - I'm the guy who's been telling you that worldbuilding doesn't matter, that you shouldn't sweat out all these insignificant...

While I've written quite a bit about dialogue tags, the truth is that I don't care about tags per se as much as I do about a greater...

"Story setting" being a less writerly term for worldbuilding, in case you were wondering. I write a lot of short stories, and in my...