Writing Craft Beginnings are exciting and endings write themselves. The middle is where novels go to die — and where most of them are abandoned. There’s a reason so many half-finished novels live in drawers and hard drives, stalled at roughly the same place: the middle. Beginnings are easy and thrilling to write — … Read more
Writing Craft The fear that planning will drain the life out of your story is real — but so is the blank-page drift that strands most unplanned drafts. There’s a middle way. Ask a room of novelists how they plan their books and you’ll start a small war. On one side are the outliners — … Read more
Writing Craft The most repeated writing advice is also the most misunderstood — including the part where you’re sometimes supposed to ignore it. “Show, don’t tell” is the most famous piece of writing advice in the English language, and also one of the most misapplied. Every workshop repeats it, every craft book enshrines it, … Read more
Writing Craft Good dialogue sounds like real speech but does work real speech never does. Here’s the difference, and how to write it. Dialogue is where a lot of otherwise promising fiction quietly falls apart. The description is vivid, the premise is strong, and then the characters open their mouths and the whole thing deflates … Read more