Craft
Craft writing — POV, tense trends, mechanics, genre.
Voice Is a System
Voice gets talked about as if it were weather. A book has it or it doesn’t. The writer found it, or lost it somewhere around chapter nine, or is still hoping it will descend like grace.
Literary Fiction’s Plot Problem: Pacing the Quiet Novel
There is a particular note that quiet, character-driven novels attract again and again, from agents, from beta readers, from the writers themselves at three in the morning: nothing happens.
The Chapter Starts Too Late
Every writer has heard the advice to start later. Cut the warm-up. Skip the alarm clock and the drive to work.
Writing the Modern Domestic Thriller
The domestic thriller has a problem that comes directly from its success. Ever since Gone Girl reorganized the commercial fiction landscape more than a decade ago, the form has been worked so…
Scene Choice Is Plot
We tend to define plot as the order of events, and that definition is true as far as it goes. But it leaves out a decision that shapes a novel just as profoundly, and that writers make a hundred…
POV Choice as Story Engine
POV is a decision about what the reader is allowed to know — and when — not just a camera position. Change it and you change the entire story.
The Present Tense Decision
You chose present tense because it felt more immediate. You may have made your novel harder to read without knowing it.
Scene vs. Summary
"Show, don't tell" is the most repeated piece of writing advice in English. It's also incomplete in a way that quietly breaks novels.
First Person vs. Close Third: How to Decide
You've been writing in the wrong POV for 60,000 words. Here's how to figure that out before your editor does.
