Melodrama tends to get a bad rep these days, and not without good reason. Certainly, melodrama – that is, sensational drama; exaggerated, flat characters; farcically exciting events; and extreme responses and actions – can often come at the expense of those other aspects of fiction that make your book worth reading: deep characters, subtext, complex
Have you ever read a book where every character – from the six-year-old in pigtails to the wizened sea captain to the stripper – sounds the same? It’s easy for authors to stumble into this mono-tone pitfall. The task of writing a story is already monumental, and adopting a narrative voice appropriate to the story
The beginning and the end. More writers have had more aneurysms over bookending their stories and sections than just about anything else. We recently covered the Dreaded First Line; today I’d like to tackle the Dreaded Last Line(s)… of each scene. Whether it’s writing too little or too much, authors of every stripe tend to
Many writers, particularly if they’re writing fantasy, YA, or sci-fi, like to spice up their stories with the occasional song and poem. Maybe they’re trying to aid characterization with some soulful poetry, share exposition through a traditional ballad, or just make their world feel a little more real. Done well, such embedded works can bring
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