Finnian Burnett

Looking to brush up your writing skills or learn a new trick or two? You've come to the right place! Check back weekly for helpful tips and articles that make your writing better. 


Finnian Burnett is a doctoral student and a college instructor who teaches creative writing and English literature. Finn has published several novels, but their true writing love is flash fiction. They’ve shortlisted or won with Bath Flash, Bridport Prize, Blank Spaces Magazine, The London Story Prize, Reflex Press and more.

The Clothes Make the Man, a flash fiction collection about Arthur, a trans man navigating academia, was recently released by Ad Hoc Publishing and their next collection is forthcoming through Off Topic Publishing. Finn’s passion is mentoring emerging writers and helping others find their own passion for writing.

In their spare time, Finnian watches a lot of Star Trek. Finn lives in BC with their wife and Lord Gordo, the cat. 

blog posts by Finnian Burnett

August 24, 2023

Conveying emotions in your work can be difficult, but it’s an important part of the craft. Offering insight into your characters’ feelings helps your reader develop empathy for them. When a… read more

July 24, 2023

Letting the reader into your character’s mind creates a connection. A character’s words might not always tell the whole story; a person’s thoughts reveal who they really are. If you want your… read more

May 31, 2023

People always ask writers where we get our ideas. Our answers are varied—conversations, song lyrics, witnessing an interaction between strangers on a bus, the particular shape and color of a piece… read more

May 17, 2023

Queer is a huge spectrum and the umbrella gets larger as we humans find language for various aspects of gender identity, orientation, and ways of existing outside of the heteronormative majority.… read more

April 17, 2023

This post is part two in a series.

In The Structure of Flash Fiction (part 1), we discussed how you can use flash fiction to help hone your story and covered the first part of flash fiction… read more

March 30, 2023

Flash fiction is a very short story. How short depends on who is defining it. Some say less than 1500 words, some say 1000. Some flash fiction stories can be just a few words. For novel writers,… read more

March 10, 2023

A lot of people write by the seat of their pants—that is, they rush headlong into writing a book without any sort of physical outline. That’s okay. Everyone’s writing process is different and if… read more

February 27, 2023

If you talk to other writers about writer’s block, a fair number will say there’s no such thing. Writer’s block is just lack of planning; someone once told me. Another said writer’s block just… read more