Fiction Craft Blog

It's very common for newer fantasy writers to focus heavily on worldbuilding and much less on developing their characters. After all, worldbuilding is the main draw of fantasy and speculative fiction more widely, and novels in all genres have characters. Older fantasy novels often had quite flat, undeveloped characters. The current Anglo-American market for fantasy fiction has moved on, though. The popularity of Romantasy links to the increased importance of strong emotional

This blog post describes developmental editing services and how they are different from manuscript critiques. The second half covers examples of developmental editing comments an author might expect on their manuscript, with a commentary explaining their purpose. Developmental editing is all about feedback on a complete book manuscript draft to improve it. The first step is usually a manuscript critique, which consists of a first reading of the manuscript, with the editor tak

This blog post describes what a manuscript critique, as a paid developmental editing service , involves. It covers whether authors can really benefit from them, and what kind of specific story advice they might receive. A manuscript critique is a paid service where authors hire a developmental editor to write a critique / assessment / evaluation of their manuscript. The word critique implies that they will tear it to shreds, but this is not a grad school critique. Instead, th

This blog post covers: The advantages and disadvantages of using a first-person point of view The two main types of first-person point of view – embedded and retrospective Common problems and how to fix them The use of first-person point of view in ethnography First-person points of view have become increasingly popular in various fiction genres over the past few decades. The reason for this is that they are often highly immersive, and there has been increased appetite for im

Blake Snyder’s book Save the Cat! offers a blueprint for screenwriters on how to draft a successful film script. The book draws on his experience as a Hollywood screenwriter and outlines a beat sheet that describes the different points and pacing in many winning films. Somewhat later, Jessica Brody transformed the insights into a craft book for novel writing called Save the Cat! Writes a Novel . Her book includes a similar beat sheet, and she also categorises novels based on

This trope often appears in film, and in popular culture and novels too. It features a woman who has typically experienced some kind of trauma, is quirky with a different appearance (e.g. colored hair) to “normal” women, and who jolts a male protagonist into recognising a deeper life purpose. The character often later needs "rescuing" and the male protag plays a heroic role in doing so. This character is rooted in misogynistic representations of women. The trope is comparable