Tag: writing fiction

Charles Dickens—Using Symbol, Theme & Allegory to Create Enduring Stories

Why are there certain stories we just can’t get enough of? Why do some stories fade away while others become staples for every generation? Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol has been made into all kinds of movies, plays, cartoons, musicals and there are countless variations of Dickens’ original story: A grumpy old miser who is transformed …

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How to Sneak In Any Amount of Information & Maintain the Fictive Dream

As an editor I have some pretty standard red flags I look for, but a REALLY common blunder is the dreaded information dump. Some genres are more prone to this than others. Science fiction and fantasy can be particularly vulnerable. How DO you keep the pace of the story and still relay about the prophecy, the starship, the dragons and the dragons prophesied to have starships?

3 Simple Tricks to Create a Character OH SO Different From YOU

Have you ever written a character you thought you couldn’t portray well because he was too different from you? In this post, Alex lays out three secrets on how to make a character like that come to life.

Using Dialogue to Create Dimensional Characters

So last time we talked about the basics in regards to dialogue and once we grasp the fundamentals—like proper punctuation—we then can focus more on elements of style. How we deliver the dialogue. We can tell a lot about people by the way they speak. What people say or don’t say speaks volumes. As the writer, it …

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9 Ways to Improve Your Dialogue

Dialogue is responsible for not only conveying the plot, but it also helps us understand the characters and get to know them, love them, hate them, whatever.