Writing Sex Scenes (the Right Way)
“His pointer finger circled my puckered love cave. ‘Are you ready for this?’ he mewled, smirking at me like a mother hamster about to eat her three-legged young.” This is […]
Writing Short Stories
In the world of fiction writing, most industry insiders heavily suggest getting some shorter pieces published before querying, or possibly even before writing a longer work like a novel. There […]
A Writer’s Guide to Pacing Fiction
It’s something many writers, especially those at the beginning of their career, don’t think a lot about—but make no mistake, good pacing is absolutely one of the most crucial elements […]
Writing Death and Grief
Few topics are as complex, emotionally rich, and broad as death and our extremely varied reactions to it. Many, many, if not most fictional stories somehow touch on mortality, and […]
Where and When: Mastering Setting
This is the fourth post in a series of five on the elements of storytelling, in collaboration with the Ice Colony Podcast. Having gone in-depth on character, plot, and dialogue, […]
Fictional Trauma Narratives
I absolutely love writing trauma in fiction. It’s been an intense interest of mine since I majored in psychology in college, taking several classes on the effects of trauma in […]
People Don’t Talk Like That: Mastering Dialogue
This post is the third in a five-part series on the elements of fiction writing, in collaboration with the Ice Colony. Dialogue is one element of fiction that stands apart […]
Writing Raw Emotion
Capturing the genuine heart of the human experience in fiction relies heavily on poignant and impactful depiction of emotion. In order to evoke feeling in the reader, you must evoke […]
One Thing Led to Another: Mastering Plot
*This is the second of five posts in collaboration with The Ice Colony on the elements of storytelling. Last month we tackled character development. Now we’re onto plot. Plotting a […]
Chapter by Chapter: What Makes a Good Scene
Most writers, myself included, can attest to the fact that even once you’ve got a killer plot and great characters, writing a novel can be difficult on a chapter to […]