Helping Writers Become Authors

Only a handful of things raise a novel from mediocrity into something truly memorable. Learning how to make your writing more visual is one of them.

Make sure your story passes these 3 important tests for acing its emotional stakes, and you'll never have any problem getting readers to suspend disbelief.

In order to write pertinent and powerful stories, you must first understand why art is so important. Here are 3 reasons for the existence of stories.

Avoiding too much description is ultimately about controlling your entire narrative. Use these description tips to advance your plot, character, and theme.

Learn the important stages of being a writer and how you can navigate past the obstacles they present on your way up the mountain to mastery.

In learning how to write opening and closing lines that delight readers, keep these nine (and a half!) tips in mind and have fun creating something special.

Discover five of the most important tactics for how to write a sequel that fulfills (and maybe even exceeds) your readers' expectations.

Discover how avoiding dead-end relationships will help you eliminate other story killers such as dull plots, insipid characters, and flat themes.

Instead of worrying about writing an original book, start focusing instead on individuality. How? Here are six important questions to get you started.

Want readers to react to your story in just the right way? Learn how to pace your story, using these eight important pacing tricks to get you started.

Using these simple brainstorming tricks, you can figure out how to troubleshoot a scene and turn it into one of the highlights of your entire manuscript.

Learn the three ways you can go wrong with unfulfilled foreshadowing, as well as five ways to avoid accidentally creating it in the first place.

If you've created a unique story premise, you're only halfway to hooking readers. Discover two ways to write a gripping story hook in your first chapter.

Figuring out how to outline a series may explode your preconceptions about the process and teach you so much more about outlining and storycraft in general.

Plot reveals are the secret ingredient to create complex and skillful stories that thrill readers on every page. Learn how to find them in your every scene!

If you have the sadly sinking suspicion you might be beginning your story too late, consider the following six signs and solutions.

Character misdirection is a delightful game authors get to play in their stories. Who's good? Who's bad? We don't know! Here are 5 ways to entrance readers.

To reach your goal of writing gripping and intense story conflict, you must first learn how to make that conflict matter to readers. Here's how!

Learn a simple secondary tool you can bring in as a support for the classic (but sometimes mechanical) approach to scene structure.

Once you understand what to look for, you can find and fix even the most extraneous of story events before they derail your book's narrative.