How can you develop characters that will keep your readers glued to the pages? Their backstory plays a huge part in getting it right—characters don’t come into existence on the first page of your story. 

But don’t worry, you don’t need to chronicle your...

Action scenes are an absolute treat when they’re done well. They can speed up pacing, provide huge advances in the plot, and push characters to their physical and emotional limits.

When action scenes are not done well, however, they can actually make the story drag, causing the reader to...

Learning to fast draft a novel isn’t just about speeding up your writing process, giving yourself deadlines, or whipping out pages in record time. It’s also about teaching yourself how not to be one of those authors who eagerly starts a new and amazing project, then loses steam...

When crafting a story, we usually focus on our characters and how they evolve as they grow and change throughout our carefully crafted plots. The setting can be overlooked (with no sense of the story's world) or overcooked (when it feels like you’re reading a travel guide instead of a...

Writing may be a solitary endeavor, but one companion plagues every author from time to time: Fear. 

Writer’s block, fear of rejection, and imposter syndrome (the fear of being exposed as a fraud) are all examples of fear popping up in a writer's life. If that weren’t enough,...

We’ve all read novels where the witty banter between characters is a joy to witness, or where a character surprises us every time they speak. But we’ve also read ones where conversations drag on and on, or characters’ voices all sound alike.

No one wants to read the second...

At a glance, writing a novel in a first-person or third-person point of view seems like an easy enough decision. It’s just a pronoun you’re changing, after all.

But choosing your point of view (or POV for short) is more complex than you’d think. First-person and third-person...

Crafting a story with multiple points of view can be one of the most fun and rewarding adventures for a writer. It gives you a chance to play with different voices and styles in the same project, and also allows you to show the same characters and events through different lenses.

But expanding...

Flashbacks done well can have a profound effect on your story. They can add depth to your characters, intrigue to your plot lines, or serve as eye-opening reveals.

In this post, we’ll dive deep into what flashbacks are, why they can be so compelling, and how to use them for maximum effect...