The Chopping Blog

External conflict is essential to keeping the story moving, but it's the internal conflicts of your characters that make the reader care.

In our personal lives, we expend a lot of energy trying to avoid awkward situations. In fiction, we should embrace them.

Planting false clues or intentionally distracting the reader from what’s actually happening can be a great way to avoid predictability in a plot and create a satisfying twist. Foreshadowing is the tool you need for this type of misdirection. 

"A great novel is honed, not hatched."

A truly effective hook doesn't just make promises—it's also the initial evidence that those promises will be fulfilled.

To me, an unpublishable manuscript is simply not publishable yet.

Like many “rules” in writing and publishing, there is more to the story than meets the eye.

Sometimes people overstuff their schedules to make sure they have time to write each day—which can lead to burnout. But sometimes burnout occurs when you’re so busy that you no longer make time to write.

By reducing unnecessary sensory and cognitive verbs, you allow your audience to slip into the shoes of the protagonist and experience events as they unfold, without redundant reminders that the scene is filtering through the senses and cognition of the focal character.

A clear, specific, and relatable narrative goal is one of the fundamentals of storytelling.

As a developmental editor, I have reviewed many manuscripts and drafted countless feedback reports for my clients. In doing so, I came to realize that all my feedback fits into two main categories: immersion and emotional draw.

The hero’s journey can be a bit daunting, but when we superimpose the terms of three-act-structure on it, it becomes a lot more familiar.