Can You Put Someone Who Wronged You in Your Novel?
Writers have always turned people who hurt them into villains. Why a fiction disclaimer won't protect you, what makes a character too recognizable, and how to borrow a real villain safely.
Category: Fiction (Page 3)
FictionWriting Vampires: How to Build Your Own Vampire Rules
Can a vampire show up on thermal imaging, use a smartphone or trigger an automatic sink? How to build vampire rules from an origin, with lessons from Dracula 2000 and Blade.
FictionWhat Software Do Novelists Use to Write a Book?
Most novelists write in Word, and I do too. The free alternatives, when Scrivener or NovelCrafter is worth it, whether to handwrite the first draft, and which tools format a novel for print.
FictionShould You Only Use “Said” in Dialogue Tags? My Rules for Tags and Adverbs
Readers skim right past dialogue tags, so use the plain ones and don't bury anything important in them. My simple rules for said, tag variety, adverbs and action beats.
Book MarketingWhy a Good Book Isn’t Enough: Agents, Quiet Novels and What Sells
Agents reject well-written novels every day, and quiet literary fiction is the hardest sell of all. Why a good book isn't enough, and what sells books.
FictionAnna: American Journey
Book two of Deanna Bennett's Anna Immigration Trilogy takes fifteen-year-old Anna through Ellis Island and onto a train to Chicago, where she learns how people fear and prey on immigrants. A tribute and a review.
FictionAnna: American Dream
The final book of Deanna Bennett's Anna Immigration Trilogy follows Anna through war, the great influenza epidemic and the temperance fight, as a Lithuanian girl builds an American life between 1914 and 1919. A tribute and a review.
FictionAnna: Going to America
Book one of Deanna Bennett's Anna Immigration Trilogy follows a fifteen-year-old Lithuanian girl and her stern mother across Europe by rail and across the Atlantic in steerage in 1914. A tribute and a review.
FictionGhostwriting a Novel Based on Your Own Life
A ghostwriter can turn your life story into a novel, starting with the same interviews as a memoir and then changing names, places and timelines to build a plot. How to choose between memoir and novel, and what fiction does…
FictionWhen Your Memoir Should Be a Novel
Every chapter is addressed to four people who will never read it. That is when I suggest we write it as a novel, change the names, and move the industry.
FictionThe Adolescence of P-1
A student writes a program designed to stay alive, then abandons it. The program does not stop. Thomas J. Ryan described a computer worm years before anyone had the word.
Behind the BookBehind the Book: The Mysterious Island, Neb’s Side
Verne gave Neb one job and no interior life. He is on almost every page of the original and never once in a sentence that matters. This version is the correspondent’s private record, and it exists to correct that.