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. 


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 of fresh fruit in a loved one’s hands, an old TV show barely remembered.

Life is full of sources of inspiration and...

Finding Writing Inspiration in Your Everyday Life

May 31, 2023
by Finnian Burnett

Types of Conflict

February 20, 2021
by J.M. Frey

Stories are, fundamentally, all about conflict.

In most stories, your protagonist wants something—to change a law or the government itself, to avenge a death, to hook up with the cutie, to dispel a curse—and your antagonist usually wants something that is in direct opposition of whatever the protagonist wants.

From those opposing wants come the narrative conflict and thus...

What is Worldbuilding?

February 14, 2021
by Ashley Tenn

The term worldbuilding conjures images of secondary worlds, far away planets, and magic systems, so much so that it has become ubiquitous with writing and game development, particularly within fantasy and science fiction genres. But what exactly is it? How does one go about building a world in the first place? And what do you mean, I should consider worldbuilding even when the...

Narrative Voice:  Creating Your Unreliable Narrator

February 4, 2021
by J.M. Frey

Which of your characters is going to lie to your audience, and why?

Firstly, it's always important to remember that no baddie ever actually thinks they’re the baddie. They are always hero of their own tales, so create them to believe that. Take Loki, from the Marvel Cinematic Universe films. His character arc is a great example of someone going to increasingly more desperate ends...

Narrative Voice: What is an Unreliable Narrator?

January 22, 2021
by J.M. Frey

Now that we’ve established what a point-of-view (POV) and a Narrative Voice are, let’s talk about Unreliable Narrators. These are narrators who, either because of the way they interpret the world, omissions in their story, or outright falsehoods and manipulation, lie to the reader.

In the first part of this series, I talked about the narrator as the driver of a story, the...

Narrative Voice: Creating a Narrative Voice

January 15, 2021
by J.M. Frey

Once you’ve chosen your narrator, your next job is to figure out how they speak. Have a good long think about how their upbringing, social class, race, gender, sexuality, education, job, family home life, nation, etc. interconnect and serve to shape their morals, choices, preferences, and understanding of the world.

And once you’ve got that down, think about how all of those...

Narrative Voice: Using More Than One Narrator

January 8, 2021
by J.M. Frey

Depending on how your plot is structured and the way your scenes are woven together, both your narrative and your readers may benefit from being able to experience your story through multiple different narrators. 

The Easy Stuff

This storytelling choice allows the readers to experience different moments and episodes within the plot, perhaps when one...

Narrative Voice: Who Is Telling Your Story?

December 25, 2020
by J.M. Frey

Welcome to the first of five articles about creating a narrative voice.

Deciding who your narrator is going to be is not only vital for you as a creator —because without someone to tell the story on your behalf, you can’t tell it at all—but it will also effect how and why your story is exists at all. This makes narrative voice the most important decision you can make before...

Main Characters

December 18, 2020
by Ashley Tenn

Protagonist vs. Antagonist

Every story needs a main cast, but which characters qualify? How do we know who is important and who plays a supporting role?  Let's talk about characters!

Stories have heroes. Stories also have villains.  Sometimes stories have neither. But that's a special case. Let's break things down first.

Protagonists

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