Start here: On Writing Fantasy, Building Systems, and Understanding How People Think
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Killing your characters: when, why, and how
Character deaths are powerful. They can be the emotional high point of a story — or they can feel cheap, manipulative, and pointless. The difference is in…
Visual storytelling
Film is a visual medium. This sounds obvious, but the implications for how you write a screenplay are profound. Everything in your screenplay must be visible.…
How to fix a saggy middle
You started strong. The opening crackles with energy. The characters are vivid, the premise is gripping, the stakes are clear. Then you hit the middle, and…
Agency
Agency, in terms of character and plot, is something that has always been something of a mystery to me. So when my editor flagged that sometimes my characters…
The comfort reread
Some books are events. You read them once, they change you, and you put them on the shelf with a kind of reverence. You might never pick them up again. Other…
The gap
There's a phase in every writer's development that almost nobody warns you about. Ira Glass described it better than anyone: > “All of us who do creative…
Screenplay dialogue: the art of less
In prose, dialogue can meander. Characters can talk the way real people talk — with tangents, repetitions, verbal tics, circling around points before making…
How to write action scenes that work
Action scenes should be the exciting bits. So why are they so often boring on the page? The problem is, and it's one I learned the hard way, that what works…
Getting edited hurts, but do it anyway
I'm currently working with Jo Fletcher on my latest fantasy novel. Jo is a legend — one of the most respected editors in the genre, responsible for launching…