“Wow, I can’t stop thinking about that story! It was so good!” Every writer dreams of hearing this response from their readers. You worked hard on drawing the reader in and keeping them turning pages until the end, but the end — your finale — will be the deciding...

You’ve come up with a premise for a novel you can’t wait to explore. You have an idea of the characters, the setting, and even a handful of scenes you definitely want to include. But without a comprehensive plot to string everything together, you can run into problems. Writing...

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...