Archive:

Fiction

Character Motivation: How to Craft Realistic Characters

December 8, 2025

  Want Jerry as Your Mentor? Learn More List a handful of your favorite novels and I’ll bet they have one thing in common: an unforgettable main character. From Captain Ahab to Atticus Finch and from Harry Potter to Katniss Everdeen, such memorable characters seem like long-lost friends. Inventing characters and infusing them with the […]

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Creative Writing 101

December 8, 2025

  Want Jerry as Your Mentor? Learn More You love to write and have been told you have a way with words. So you’ve decided to give writing a try—creative writing. The problem is, you’re finding it tougher than you thought it would be. You have a great story idea, but you’re not sure how […]

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8 Types of Characters in Fiction and How to Use Them

December 8, 2025

Why do we remember characters in fiction like Huckleberry Finn, Oliver Twist, Frodo Baggins, and Harry Potter years after we meet them? Page-turning novels feature believable characters with human flaws, people who grow heroic in the end. So how do you conjure up characters like that? First, it pays to understand the basic types of […]

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How to Start a Story: 5 Proven Strategies and Why They Matter

December 8, 2025

  Want Jerry as Your Mentor? Learn More Acquisitions editors and agents reject some manuscripts within the first page or two. That doesn’t sound fair—and maybe it isn’t—but that’s the reality we writers face. Even if you’re self-publishing and avoiding the harsh glare of professional eyes, you must rivet your readers from the get-go or […]

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How to End a Story: 3 Secrets to Writing a Captivating Ending

December 8, 2025

You’ll find loads of advice to help you find a great novel idea, start writing, and push through what I call the Marathon of the Middle. But you may not find as much on how to end a story, though that’s every bit important. Of my more than 200 published books, more than two-thirds have […]

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