Every genre has its own contract with the reader, and breaking it carelessly loses them. These how-to guides cover writing fairy tales, superhero fiction, mystery, science fiction, horror, and more — each with the conventions that genre’s readers expect.
Fiction WritingHilary Layne of The Second Story argues that explicit sex is dragging fiction down. Part of the case holds up: sex is optional, motion-by-motion scenes rarely earn their length, and a market that sells on heat lets the story slide.
Fiction WritingCan 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.
Alternate HistoryThe goggles and brass were never the point. Steampunk has been asking one question since Verne: what does it cost to build a world with this technology, and who pays?
Fiction WritingIf your western feels fake, your characters are thinking like modern people in period clothing. Frontier psychology is the fix, and everything else follows from it.
Fantasy FictionFantasy has to be wondrous and believable at once. Chase only wonder and the world collapses at the first hard question; chase only logic and nobody feels
Fiction WritingScience fiction readers came for ideas taken seriously. They do not want a marvel as scenery; they want it followed to its consequences. Learn the what-if
Fiction WritingHorror is a flight simulator for fear. Readers seek controlled, survivable fright because it makes them feel more alive and more able to face real threats
Fiction WritingGenre fiction exists to make the unconscious conscious. Each genre is a safe container for an emotional experience readers struggle to face directly. Learn
Genre Writing GuidesSuperhero fiction is not action with costumes. The genre carries a contract: competence, moral weight, and cost. Learn to satisfy all three, decide what your
Crime FictionReaders come to mystery for justice, not merely the puzzle. In a world that feels unjust, a mystery delivers a problem solved through skill and persistence and
Fiction WritingGhostwriting suspense is engineering dread. Every scene has to tighten the screw, controlling what the reader knows and when.
Fiction WritingNostalgia is mostly a lie, but some of what we traded away after 2000 cost us something real. DVDs you actually owned, phone numbers in your head, the map of your own city, boredom that fed your imagination. A clear-eyed…
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