Essential Guide to Writing a Novel

We writers can train ourselves to peel the onion: to look more deeply at places and people, and so set forth our discoveries in lovely language in our stories.  Here's how the masters do it.  Also, F. Scott Fitzgerald's "action is character" is a strong technique for revealing our characters' personalities to readers, and I talk about "action is character" here.

Readers love dialogue.  It's as if they are part of the scene, sitting there and listening to our characters argue or romance each other or plan something important.  Here are additional techniques to grip readers with our dialogue. Also: V.S. Naipaul's rules of writing.

Here is a 20-episode master class on fiction writing—a start-to-finish course covering plot, charac...

Dialogue is like a Snickers candy bar: it's good.  Here are eight techniques for making conversations in our story engage the reader, things we should do and things we should avoid.  Also, how did Sue Monk Kidd handle her first rejection? And Meg Cabot on how to keep going so we finish our story.

The shark.  Dracula.  Draco Malfoy. Cathy Ames. Annie Wilkes, Hannibal Lecter. Jadis the White Witch. Aren't these villains masterful creations, and don't they keep readers glued to the story? Here are ideas on how we can create wonderful--is that the right word?--villains. Also, we can keep our first-person narrator from being off-puttingly self-referential.

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