Category Archives: Resident Writing Coach
The Key Components of a Compelling Character (According to Psychology)
We’re fascinated by our fellow humans. In fact, we have a profound desire to try and understand the thoughts and feelings bouncing around other people, the characters on TV…the hero introduced on your first page. From an evolutionary perspective, this … Continue reading
How to Get Emotion Onto the Page
It is a truth universally acknowledged: you have to hook the reader right out of the starting gate. From the very first sentence your story must incite that delicious sense of urgency that makes readers have to know what happens next. But … Continue reading
Want Readers to Fall in Love With Your Hero? Create The Perfect Hero Lens
We writers worry about all sorts of things: traits, arcs, themes, motives etc. But even when we’ve got all of those things sorted, bridging the gap between the black ink and the reader’s heart can still require something more… That … Continue reading
Context, Text, and Subtext: What They Are and How They Help Storytelling
In writing tips, we talk about text a lot. But I feel like we don’t talk enough about context and subtext in this industry. Both are vital to good storytelling and often misunderstood or even mixed up. So today I … Continue reading
How to Nail the First Three Pages
Let’s face it, talking about writing the first pages of a novel is stressful. It can strike terror into the heart of even the most seasoned writer, because as writers we all know how scarily narrow the window is, and … Continue reading
Create Killer Twists: Learn How to Redeem Your Villain
You might think a villain can’t be redeemed. After all, they’re sinister and twisted and think killing people is a post-dinner dessert choice. But even villains are people, and, no matter how coal-crusted it gets, they have a heart buried … Continue reading
Capturing Complex Emotion: A Writer’s Superpower
Our brain is driven by emotion. We may like to think we’re rational beings, applying the rules of logic calmly and sensibly to those little and not-so-little decisions, but our every thought, our whole perspective is colored by emotion. What … Continue reading
Meet Our Newest Resident Writing Coaches!
We’re heading into our third year of the Resident Writing Coach program, can you believe it? Writers Helping Writers is honored to host some of the best teachers of writing craft out there, bringing you a variety of voices and … Continue reading
And…Action! Applying TV Lessons to Chapter Hooks
We’ve probably all heard the advice to end our scenes and chapters on a hook. At the end of every scene or chapter, readers might put down our book and decide against picking it up again, so it’s important to … Continue reading
Where’s Your Edge?
Some of my most enjoyable teaching experiences were with my friends Donald Maass and Christopher Vogler doing Story Masters, a four-day immersion in the craft of fiction. For my day of instruction, I started off showing a clip from the … Continue reading