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Building a Fictional World: A Novelist's Guide
December 10, 2022
Repeat this to yourself: the world is merely the backdrop. It is not the story. It will want to be the story. It will try. But you can’t let it.
- On the craft
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- 3 comments
Is Save the Cat! for lazy novelists?
December 09, 2022
You’ll never be able to create an engaging plot with deeply nuanced and compelling characters simply by using a formula.
- On the craft
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Reading Deliberately
December 08, 2022
Whenever I’m editing someone else’s work, I always read it more than once and am astonished by what I missed the first time around.
- On the craft
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Why Today? The Importance of an Inciting Incident
December 07, 2022
Once you decide on an inciting incident, you set in motion a chain of plot events that will culminate in the novel’s climax.
- On the craft
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Find Your Why
December 06, 2022
While it might seem a little navel-gaze-y to ask yourself why you write, there will come a time when your entire career might depend on the answer to that question.
- On the craft
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The problem with plot points
December 05, 2022
Outlining a novel with plot points can, at first glance, seem like a paint-by-numbers, formulaic approach to writing.
- On the craft
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- 6 comments
Workaday Writer: The Importance of Routine
December 02, 2022
That’s what a routine helps you do: it is a ritualized action that gets baked into your day so that you don’t have to spend any time thinking about whether you feel like doing it or would rather go have coffee with friends.
- On the craft
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Everything I Know About Writing I Learned from the Rolling Stones
November 15, 2022

Mick Jagger probably never realized this, but he and his bandmates knew a lot about how to write a good novel.
- On the craft
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Writer's Block—Myths & Realities
November 08, 2022
Good things take time. And writing, like any craft, involves an apprenticeship period. It’s not a block. It’s a learning curve. Embrace the mess.
- On the craft
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Setup Is Not Stasis: How to Write a Gripping First Chapter
October 12, 2022
Context plays an important role in fiction and narrative nonfiction. It adds depth to the characters, the setting, and the conflict. Context is also your best tool for creating in readers a sense of participation. The trick lies in subtlety.
- On querying
- On the craft
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Five Mistakes to Avoid When Writing Dialogue
September 28, 2022
A sign of well-written dialogue is when you’re reading it without making any active effort to understand who’s speaking or what their mood is like.
- On the craft
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Should you pay for beta readers?
July 10, 2022
Readers are diverse; they each bring their own expectations and preferences to any story they read. As such, it's best to get a wide range of opinions about your narrative.
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