Fiction Help

Want side characters who feel real without stealing the show? Side characters add depth, challenge protagonists, and reveal key themes—but if they overshadow the main cast, they can derail your story. Learn how to write side characters with just the right amount of detail to keep the spotlight where it belongs.

The first chapter of your novel often determines whether the reader will keep reading. It is crucial that this first chapter hook and keep the reader engaged until the very end. Learn the elements to include and the mistakes to avoid in your first chapter.

Your main character(s) can make or break your book, so it is worth the time to get it right. Learn how to create a compelling character that will keep your reader turning the pages.

Save money on your editor and learn to edit for the most common word- and sentence-level issues in fiction. You will learn to be a better writer for having gone through this process and you will save money.

Readers want to know your characters even in a plot-driven story. They don’t have to like your characters, but they have to know your characters. So how do you make this happen? By revealing character interiority. Without effective interiority, you hold your readers back from really engaging and immersing themselves in your story. Learn all about one of the secrets to a compelling novel, interiority: what it is and how to use it effectively.

Crime novelists need to make sure they get the details right when it comes to police work. So in this blog, learn the steps the police go through once a theft is reported to find the criminal and charge them with larceny, burglary, and/or robbery. And as a bonus, learn how to spice up detective work, so it isn’t too boring.

Free indirect speech is a powerful tool when writing in third person. It gives you the intimacy of first person but with the flexibility of third person. Learn what it is and why you want to use this tool.

“Show, don’t tell” is popular writing advice, but it can be tricky to understand what it really means. Telling is not always bad. But when it takes the reader out of an immersive experience or seems dry, you want to revise to show, don’t tell. This blog shows you how to do that in a variety of ways with clear examples.

While writing is highly subjective, some objective guidelines for good writing exist. For one, if you start too many sentences in a row with the same pattern (not necessarily the same word), your passage can sound monotonous or choppy. This isn't always the case. But it is a general objective guideline that good writing entails varying your sentence beginnings. Learn the various patterns for starting a sentence and when it's fine to have several in a row start the same way and when a rewrite may be in order. 

No story can be complete without some telling. The advice "show, don't tell" should really be know when to show and when to tell. Learn when it is okay and even preferable to tell.

Using narrative distance effectively improves your readers' experience. Its important to know when to close the distance and when to go wide. This tutorial will teach you how to do so.

“Show, don’t tell” is often repeated advice. This advice can frustrate writers because they believe they are showing when, in fact, they are telling and because no story can be complete without some telling.

This tutorial will focus on the first point of frustration: believing you are showing when you’re not.

Action beats reveal a character’s movement, emotions, and motivations; affect the rhythm and tension of the scene; and can establish the setting. Learn how to write effective action beats and use them purposefully. 

Authors often include unnecessary explanations, which can annoy and frustrate readers. Trust your readers to follow your plot and your characters' development without explanations. This blog discusses five types of unnecessary explanations and gives examples so you can avoid overexplaining your novel's plot and characters.

Readers do not enjoy info dumps. Learn what info dumps are, why it is a problem, and how to fix them.

Head-hopping is an easy trap to fall into. If you head-hop, it can pull your reader out of the scene and leave them feeling disoriented. So learn what it is, how it differs from an omniscient narrator, how to avoid it, and how to correct it if you do spot it. 

Dialogue reveals character and moves the action along, but poorly written dialogue can have the opposite effect. This article explains how to avoid common dialogue mistakes, when to use internal dialogue, and gives examples of good and bad dialogue.

When writing dialogue tags, authors often fall into these common pitfalls. Avoiding these pitfalls will strengthen your dialogue tags, improving the pacing and characterization. So read this blog to discover how you can avoid these pitfalls and write better dialogue tags today.