WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®

With no shortage of things that can trigger a character’s fear, learning how to show it becomes just as important to writers as plotting, character-building, and crafting a realistic story world.

Here’s the good news: Fear kickstarts an automatic survival response that affects a character’s behaviour, perceptions, thoughts, choices, and more. With so many cues...

When a character suffers emotional pain, the brain’s response is to stop the discomfort, and often this results in a coping mechanism being deployed. Whether it’s an automatic response or a learned go-to st...

Writing The Fear Thesaurus taught us so much about the psychology of fear and how that translates for our characters. The difference between minor and deep fears, the role fear plays character arc, how we can build it into a story’s turning points to shore up the structure…there’s so much to know about this important emotion. But don’t be afraid ;). If you haven...

As authors we hold all the cards when it comes to how and when we reveal key information to our readers. Withholding certain details can create intrigue and set up twists the reader doesn’t see coming. But if we aren’t careful, our readers might feel confused or cheated and consider our purposeful withholding as breaking a tacit agreement authors make with their readers ...

When a character suffers emotional pain, the brain’s response is to stop the discomfort, and often this results in a coping mechanism being deployed. Whether it’s an automatic response or a learned go-to...