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No one likes a liar in real life, but it can be thrilling to slide into the head of a dishonest character in fiction. Maybe they choose to embellish, hide part of the truth, or tell us a story that ...

How does a #1 New York Times bestselling author create conflict in her scenes? Find out in this exclusive Writing Mastery interview!

From the moment Marissa Meyer hit the young adult fiction scen...

You’ve heard it a million times: “Show, don't tell.” But what does "show, don’t tell" really mean? How do we spot telling in our own writing? And is showing always the better choice, or are there inst...

Antagonists are people, too. Soulless corporations and faceless soldiers play their part when we think of stereotypical “villains,” but the great antagonists are the ones who are just as complex as ...

Fight scenes are an absolute treat when they’re done well. They can speed up pacing, provide huge advances in the plot, and push characters to their physical and emotional limits.

When fight scenes...

Learning to fast draft a novel isn’t just about speeding up your writing process, giving yourself deadlines, or whipping out pages in record time. It’s also about teaching yourself how not to be one o...

When crafting a story, we usually focus on our characters and how they evolve as they grow and change throughout our carefully crafted plots. The setting of a story may be overlooked (with no sense of...

We’ve all read novels where the witty banter between characters is a joy to witness, or where a character surprises us every time they speak. But we’ve also read ones where conversations drag on and...