Pathos is down on its luck these days; appeals to emotion are bound up in reasonable fears of ‘post-truth’ and ‘populist’ writing, but I’m here to tell you that intelligent use of pathos can make your fiction better. Now, pathos certainly has its dark side. Many of the TV, radio, and internet adverts we’re bombarded
Few writers of fantasy (or any other genre) can claim to be as wildly successful as Neil Gaiman. The mild-mannered English writer has long been a kind of literary rock star; his novel American Gods picked up several awards in 2001, his novel Stardust was made into an acclaimed movie in 2007, and his The Sandman comic series
Is there such a thing as a perfect cast of characters? A pure, alchemical recipe of personalities that promises the most engaging narrative a reader could ask for? No, of course not – it’s the events of the story that dictate what it needs from its cast, and what works well for one tale will
A MacGuffin (or McGuffin, or Maguffin) is a plot device common to some of the most successful stories ever written. Your characters will obsess over how to find it, search jungles and alien worlds to get their hands on it, and kill to keep it, and yet many people will tell you it has no
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