Archive:
The Writing Craft
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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So you want to write a book. Becoming an author can change your life—not to mention give you the ability to impact thousands, even millions, of people. But writing a book isn’t easy. As a 21-time New York Times bestselling author, I can tell you: It’s far easier to quit than to finish. You’re going […]
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To make your reader feel they can’t put down your novel, make sure everything your main character does to get out of his terrible trouble makes it only progressively worse, until everything appears hopeless. Such obstacles and failures making things worse — with the emphasis on progressively — is the very definition of Rising Action. […]
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How do you become a better athlete, musician, scholar—or anything? You know. Practice. You run drills, play scales, review flashcards, whatever it takes. So how do you become a better writer? Speaking only for myself, I feel I get better by exercising my writing muscles. In other words, I write. Many of my colleagues swear […]
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A successful novel must feature an event, known as the inciting incident, that irreversibly ignites the story. The stronger your inciting incident, the more dramatic, compelling, and engrossing your novel. A weak or nonexistent inciting incident means no reason for your main character to become heroic, or for readers to keep turning pages. What is […]
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