Plot Planning

What separates good novels from bad? What turns a page-turner into a snoozer? What turns your protagonist from someone readers deeply care about to someone they couldn...

In fiction, plot is defined as the series of events (action) that make up a story. Most plots follow a structure known as Freytag’s triangle, which has five basic elements...

As a horror and mystery writer and a lifelong reader and watcher of the two genres, author Naomi Brett Rourke has come to know the tropes and clichés of novels and stories...

Writing is informed by more than the simple act of sitting down and putting words on a page. We get ideas in our everyday lives. We also learn how to write and tell...

Beginning a story is, for some writers, the hardest part of a manuscript. The difficulty is often a matter of not knowing how to write an exciting enough first line...