Pacing- story pacing, not reiterative walking- is a tricky beast. The problem, fundamentally, is that you, the author, have to determine not only how fast the story should move but how fast it does move. The first, honestly, is not
The list of ways to go wrong with a story has been added to and debated endlessly for century upon century upon century. The debate on plot alone is a few libraries of its own, honestly, and I don’t pretend
I have an affection for fantasy, born from The Lord of the Rings and fostered through the years, and an affection for historical fiction, born from many thousands of pages (hundreds of books, likely) in my youth. I’m not much
Ever since metaphorical pen was first set to metaphorical paper, a debate has raged: which is better, the happy ending or the sad one? The sides are many and varied, each side disagreeing with itself about why it’s right and
Good stories do not use miracles to solve problems, the lore says, and they do not use miracles to solve problems because miracles, according to common wisdom, destroy a story’s stakes, rendering great thrillers into dramatic yawn-factories. Yet the great