Writers Helping Writers^®

Show Don’t Tell

A Description Database for Character Relationships

October 10, 2024

A Description Database for Character Relationships

October 10, 2024

No matter what genre you write, your characters–and their relationships–are the heart of a story. In fact, relationships help us explore our characters’ most meaningful layers while providing readers with…

Happy 9th Birthday, One Stop for Writers (Save 25%)

October 7, 2024

Happy 9th Birthday, One Stop for Writers (Save 25%)

October 7, 2024

One Stop for Writers‘ BIRTHDAY WEEK is here! Nine years ago, Becca and I stepped outside our world of book-making and opened the doors of One Stop for Writers, a…

Five Vehicles for Adding Subtext to Dialogue

July 23, 2024

Five Vehicles for Adding Subtext to Dialogue

July 23, 2024

Realistic, evocative dialogue is an important part of any successful story. We need our characters’ interactions to be authentic, consistent, and engaging to draw readers in to what’s happening. So…

How to Fix Big Story Problems

June 13, 2024

How to Fix Big Story Problems

June 13, 2024

Is there anything more frustrating than knowing there’s a problem with our story, but not being sure how to fix it? We wish for an easy button in these moments,…

Behind the Scenes: How to Craft Compelling Backstory

May 21, 2024

Behind the Scenes: How to Craft Compelling Backstory

May 21, 2024

A character’s backstory is where all the gold is buried in terms of their motivations and misbeliefs. Who we are in the present depends to a large extent on what…

10 Reasons Why Emotion Amplifiers Are Good for Your Story

May 9, 2024

10 Reasons Why Emotion Amplifiers Are Good for Your Story

May 9, 2024

As you may have heard, we recently released The Emotion Amplifier Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Character Stress and Volatility, a companion to The Emotion Thesaurus. If you aren’t familiar…

Why Writers Should Use Psychology In Their Storytelling

April 2, 2024

Why Writers Should Use Psychology In Their Storytelling

April 2, 2024

A writer’s job is to do one thing well: pull the reader in. Our words should act like a tractor beam, sucking them into our story’s world. We tap into…

Write Like a Magician: Creating the Illusion of an Unseen Character

March 26, 2024

Write Like a Magician: Creating the Illusion of an Unseen Character

March 26, 2024

Whenever we write a protagonist who lost someone important within their backstory, we have some heavy lifting ahead of us. That “unseen” character—a character who has died or who is…

Turn Your Readers into Detectives

January 16, 2024

Turn Your Readers into Detectives

January 16, 2024

Imagine inviting us into your protagonist’s house or whatever you deem to be their most sacred physical space. But while we’re so excited to meet your protagonist, they’re not actually…

How to Generate Powerful Story Conflict

January 11, 2024

How to Generate Powerful Story Conflict

January 11, 2024

Conflict is a powerful tool for storytellers, allowing us to place roadblocks, challenges, adversaries and more in a character’s way so the road to their goal is much more difficult.…