FictionShield of Ashes is about nuclear war, and without humor the bleakness would flatten a reader before the midpoint. A well-timed flash of absurdity lets them breathe and resets the emotional baseline. Here is why I deliberately put jokes in…
FantasyI own all fifteen White Wolf limited editions of the Eternal Champion, and Moorcock justified every dollar: a multiverse so interconnected that reading it feels like grasping a cosmology instead of finishing a series. You jump between Elric, Corum, and…
FictionRemove conflict and a story stops: characters agree, nothing happens, the reader leaves. It is true in fiction, memoir, and nonfiction alike, when a manuscript drags, the conflict is usually missing, weak, or solved too fast. Here is how to…
FictionMy first short story was a wizard tournament from a tabletop game, written in junior high and mailed to a gaming magazine, which returned it buried in an editor's notes. I never sold it, but that envelope taught me more…
FictionThe girl boss has no flaws, no arc, and never earns a thing, and she is everywhere, and she is boring. Rey earns nothing; Ripley, Sarah Connor, and Lisbeth Salander are unforgettable. The difference is consequences, flaws, and craft. The…
FictionSome books drag you forward by sheer what-happens-next; others hold you because the characters feel like people you know. Plot-driven and character-driven are the two basic engines, and which you pick shapes the whole reading experience. Here are the real…
FictionOne reviewer abandoned a historical novelist forever over a single anachronism: a spinning wheel in 13th-century England. One wrong object in one character's hands, and trust evaporated. While writing a novel about the Roman civil war between Vespasian and Vitellius,…
FictionWriters love picking a team: plotter, pantser, or plantser. With ADHD, I outline everything, not on principle but because it is the only way I actually finish a book. Here is what happens when writers skip the outline, and how…
FictionWhat if there were parallel worlds where everything went differently? Seductive, and a trap. The multiverse is the most powerful idea in fiction and the easiest to wreck, because anything is possible is an excuse to avoid the choices that…
FictionTelling a complete story in under 1,000 words is brutal, and that is exactly why flash fiction teaches you to write. With no room to hide behind backstory or description, every word has to pull weight or the story breaks.…
FictionWriters feel guilty about watching television, and they should not. Done with intention, it is one of the most accessible craft lessons available, a master class in dialogue, pacing, and structure. The key word is intention. Here is how to…
FictionTwenty minutes was all I managed of Rings of Power, and everything since has confirmed the verdict: the writers do not understand Tolkien, flattening Galadriel from one of his best characters into a stock action hero. It looks like Middle-earth…
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