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Naming characters is a mercurial task. Sometimes, characters arrive in your mind wearing a name badge. Sometimes, their name is so hidden that you get the impression they’re only joining your story to lay low. Generally, experimentation is the answer, but I’m not here today to give you tips on where to find names. That’s something we covered in The Definitive Guide To Naming Your Characters, …
[Read more...] about 6 Things Authors Forget When Naming Their Characters
Imagination is a vital tool for writers looking to produce an interesting and convincing book, but it’ll only take you so far. In addition to straight-up nonfiction, there are multiple genres of fiction that need more from their author than just a vivid imagination: historical fiction, for example, or true crime, science fiction, contemporary, etc. all require research. Sometimes, that means …
[Read more...] about How To Consult Experts When Researching Your Book
John Grisham may be one of the wealthiest writers alive today. He’s spent almost every one of the past twenty-five years with a book in the bestseller charts, and for a long time his was the only voice garnering attention in the growing world of legal fiction. Those days, however, have come to an end. Legal fiction is no longer a niche subgenre dominated solely by one man – on the contrary, …
[Read more...] about The 6 Golden Rules Of Writing Legal Fiction
When it comes to mining your life for artistic inspiration, proverbs abound: Art imitates life. Truth is stranger than fiction. Write what you know. It can be immensely helpful and inspiring to draw from your own life experience to inform your writing. It can also be a minefield. Authors who have attempted to put real-life people or events on the page have asked themselves: Is this going to …
[Read more...] about How To Mine Your Life For Art (Without Being Disowned)
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 plotlines, etc. But it doesn’t have to and, even …
[Read more...] about The Author’s Guide To Melodrama (And What It Can Do For You)
This is the second in a two-part article on foreshadowing. For the first installment, click here. In Part 1 of this article, we looked at the versatility of foreshadowing and how you can use it to improve your story. In this, the concluding part of the article, we’re going to turn our attention to the technical realities of writing foreshadowing. Now we know what it can do for a story, let’s …
[Read more...] about How To Use Foreshadowing With Confidence – Part 2
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