It’s almost December 1st,  which means National Novel Writing Month is coming to a close... For those of you who participated in NaNoWriMo, please take a moment to acknowledge all the hard work you’ve done! No matter how much you wrote last month, you’re doing something that many people talk abo...

Happy #Preptober everyone! 🎃👻 I love this time of year. You get to dress in cozy layers, drink hot tea and coffee all day, decorate for Halloween, and consume all things pumpkin spice and cinnamon!  But besides all that, it's also a month of intense preparation for any writer who's planning to ...

In today's post, I'm covering the obligatory scenes of the worldview genre. If you're writing a young adult novel or a story in which a character goes through a major life change, then this post is for you! I’m also going to show you how these six key scenes manifest in three popular movies—The ...

In today's post, I'm covering the must-have conventions of the horror genre. If you want to satisfy fans of the genre and write a horror story that works, you need to include these things in your novel. I’m also going to show you how these conventions manifest in three popular movies—Halloween, ...

In today's post, I'm covering the obligatory scenes of the horror genre. If you want to scare (and satisfy) fans of the genre AND write a horror story that works, you need to nail these six key scenes in your novel. I’m also going to show you how these key scenes manifest in three popular movies...

In today’s post, I’m going to show you how to use the Hero’s Journey to map out your novel. If you aren’t familiar with the Hero’s Journey, it’s a popular story structure template that subdivides the beginning, middle, and end of a story into 12 stages. Each of these stages has a specific pu...

Are you writing a young adult novel? Or a story about a character who’s going through a major life change or transition? If so, you’re going to love today’s post on the conventions of the worldview genre! The worldview genre can be found in almost every story. It’s the emotional arc (or ...

Regardless of the genre you’re writing in, there are probably some things you’ll want to keep hidden from your readers until the time is right to surprise them. But in order to pull off a well-done surprise, you need to be sure to play fair with the reader from the start. That means you’ll n...

Thrillers are popular fiction for a reason. They combine the criminality and suspense of a good detective novel with the danger and pressure of a scary horror story. And while there’s no fool-proof way of writing a successful thriller, there are ways to ensure that your story is ticking all the r...

Romance is one of the best-selling genres in mass-market fiction with a large fan base of readers who just can’t get enough. In today’s post, I’m going to go over the key scenes that every romance novel needs to have in order to work and to satisfy fans of the genre. I’m also going to show you ...

In the last post on story structure, we went over the second story milestone – the Inciting Incident. As a reminder, the Inciting Incident is an event that upsets the balance of your protagonist’s life, gives rise to their object/s of desire, and foreshadows the story’s climax. Your protagonist ...