It may feel like a wise strategy to create fictional characters out of what you know about real people, the truth is that while characters are complex, people are just complicated. Additionally, characters’ stories unfold in an engaging sequence of events, while a real person’s life doesn’t. Think about it: we spend most of our lives sleeping. Who would want to write a story about that?

One of the many dirty, cramped, weird, and isolated rooms where I’ve made fiction. Feels like home.

Understanding your character’s basic personality traits is critical to designing their arc. Sound easy until you consider the problem. Which traits should we use? In what combination? And why?

A story that’s well-designed at the scene level nearly always hangs together at the macro-level of plot.

I’ve said this many times, in many fiction workshops, but as writers we should carry notebooks with us everywhere we go.

Consistency, brevity, and unity are essential to create the vivid continuous dream of fiction, as John Gardner explained. But that’s not what a second draft is for. And it’s certainly not the place to iron out typos and clumsy prose.

We should be working on developing complex characters so that the plot—defined as what happens when characters are put under pressure—unfolds on its own.

When it comes to finishing a novel, we need to know exactly what best practices will get us over the finish line. The best way to plan your novel and actually finish is to use Plot Math.

Doing this cycle not only gives me more ideas, loglines, and openers then I could possibly ever write, it also keeps me very sharp in my ability to generate stories. I never feel stuck, crushed, or blocked.

POV problems are the easiest for the unpracticed writer to make and they plague even high-skill writers. They are vital to fix! Sloppy POV erodes a writer’s credibility and a reader’s trust.

What if you don’t want fisticuffs, fire, mayhem, spaceships zipping at mach speed through narrow, crescent shaped gorges or sorcerer’s conjuring the universe’s dark arts? How do you manufacture conflict then?

Dialogue.

Setting is the combination of scene descriptions and blocking narrated through a specific voice to produce the effect of atmosphere.

Characterization are the choices your characters make under pressure that reveal their true natures.