Fiction

How do you keep readers riveted to the end? Conflict is the engine of fiction. Readers love it. Dianna and I recently celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary and agree on almost everything. That’s a gift in real life. In the pages of a novel? Boring. The more conflict, the more interesting your story. What is […]

You’ve always wanted to write a novel. But something’s stopped you. Maybe you’ve tried before, only to get a few, or several, pages in and lose steam because: Your story idea didn’t hold up You couldn’t overcome procrastination You feared your writing wasn’t good enough You ran out of ideas and had no clue what […]

Too many novelists create a villain who does bad things because he’s the bad guy. He might as well appear in a melodrama, wearing a black hat and a cape while twirling his handlebar mustache. But a melodramatic villain is a cliché by definition — predictable, unrealistic, and there just for fun. Hissing at the […]

Everybody loves a story in which the hero is the ultimate good guy and triumphs over evil — like Superman or Harry Potter. But beware. The #1 mistake you can make when developing characters is creating heroes that are perfect. What reader can identify with perfection? The most memorable, plausible, believable heroes exhibit human, flawed […]

Guest post by Becca Puglisi If you’ve been on the writing trail long enough, you’ve heard plenty of talk about conflict and the role it plays in storytelling. Whatever form it takes, conflict creates tension while providing opportunities for characters to grow and evolve as they navigate their character arcs. But some of the most […]