By: Rachel Scheller In your novel, the inciting incident is the first sign of trouble for your protagonist: it’s the catalyst, the chemical reaction, that sets the plot into motion. But the inciting incident isn’t only important for your main character. Understanding how to harness it is also crucial to hooking your reader from the very […]
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ALICE E.M. UNDERWOOD · Life is like a box of chocolates: you never know which one you’re going to get. Let’s use this example to understand what a simile is: A simile is a phrase that uses a comparison to describe. For example, “life” can be described as similar to “a box of chocolates.” You know you’ve spotted one when you see
By Elizabeth Sims The very first novel I, aged 20-something, wrote, is unpublished and will stay that way. An ensemble coming-of-age story of four teenagers, its weaknesses are legion: tame story line, thin action, unimaginatively rendered settings, hackneyed themes (though I will say the dialogue wasn’t bad). Having now published seven novels, I look back
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By Glen C. Strathy Your ability to write good story endings may not be as crucial to selling your fiction as the ability to write good beginnings, but it will certainly pay off in the long run in terms of satisfying your readers. Here we will review the basic types of endings, look at what
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By Tamar Sloan Psychology has given us such a wonderful understanding into human behaviour that’s it’s a veritable gold-mine for writers. It not only lets us understand our characters on a deeper level, but also our readers. Those fellow humans — that we’re asking to trade their money and their time in return for consuming
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