Starting late is kindness. Dropping readers into the middle of something already happening, trusting them to catch up, skipping the setup they never needed—that’s the generous version of in medias res. The ungracious version drops readers into chaos with no ground under their feet and calls it bold. The difference between those two versions is orientation.
How to Open a Scene In Medias Res Without Losing the Reader Read More »
Every scene needs two things. Most writers only write one. The external event is what happens. The internal shift is who’s different because of it. Get both right and readers don’t just follow the story—they live inside it.
Every Scene Needs Two Things—and Most Writers Only Write One Read More »
Horror writers spend a lot of time thinking about what will scare a reader. The monster. The atmosphere. The pacing of the reveal. All of that matters. But none of it matters first. What matters first is whether the reader has a reason to care what happens to the person in the room with the monster.
Horror/Dark Fiction Focus: Why Readers Need to Care Before They Can Be Scared Read More »
Grand moments in fiction are easy to write. The declaration. The reunion. The death. Writers know when they’re in one. The micro-moment is harder. It slips in between two lines of dialogue, sits at the end of an action beat, lives in a single physical detail nobody asked for. And then it lands harder than anything that announced itself could.
The Micro-Moment: How Small Details Create Emotional Payoff Read More »
There’s a version of grief in fiction that exists to make readers cry and nothing else. Nobody in the book is changed by it in any lasting way. Readers feel this even when they can’t name it. Here’s the difference between grief that exploits and grief that actually does something.
Writing Grief, Trauma, and Loss Without Exploiting It Read More »
Every writer has heard it. Every writing group repeats it. “Show don’t tell” gets passed around like it’s a commandment and nobody ever explains what it means. That’s the problem. Ask ten writers what it means and you’ll get ten different answers, half of which contradict each other.
Show vs. Tell Is Bad Advice: Here’s What It Actually Means Read More »
There’s a note every writer has written to themselves at some point. It lives in the margin of a draft, or in the back of your head while you’re moving too fast to stop. “Fix this later. I’ll remember what I meant to do here.” You won’t. And it will cost you more than you think.
The Revision Myth That Will Cost You Years: “I’ll Fix It Later” Read More »
Teen narrators fail in two directions and writers rarely see which one they’re doing. The cleaned-up narrator who processes grief like a licensed therapist. The performed narrator who’s so aggressively teenager they read like a parody. The voice that actually works lives somewhere more specific and harder to manufacture.
YA Focus: Writing a Teen Narrator Adults Will Still Believe Read More »
Multiple POVs get a bad reputation, and most of the time it’s because writers treated different characters as different cameras rather than different people. A camera just records. A person interprets, misses things, gets things wrong, carries their history into everything they see.
Multiple POVs Done Right and Wrong Read More »
There’s a version of first person that keeps readers at arm’s length without the writer ever realizing it. The narrator is present, the voice is there — and somehow the reader is watching instead of living inside it. Most of the time, the thing sitting between them and the character is the narrator explaining themselves.
Deep POV: Getting Out of Your Own Way as a Narrator Read More »
