The Writer's Workout

In a way, stories are like a living body. Many moving parts work together to give your writing life: the plot creates the story’s bones, the structure holds it all together, the conflict flows between everything and, at the heart of it all, are the characters. No matter what genre you enjoy, crafting fully fleshed out characters can elevate a story and make it memorable. Because of this, truly getting to know the depths of your characters is a vital part of the writing proces

Sometimes, the most memorable pieces of fiction are the ones that break convention. This can be said of Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves, which follows a manuscript about a documentary that doesn’t exist. It weaves the manuscript itself with the story of the person who found it after the original writer’s death, told through lengthy footnotes. At some points, Danielewski arranges the text in ways that require the reader to physically rotate the book in order to read it.

A character arc is the character's internal journey throughout the story. It runs concurrently with the overall narrative and plot arc. Character arcs show change to the character, both good and bad. In order to have dynamic characters that experience growth, the use of enlightenment and disillusionment arcs are critical. Enlightenment Arc These are also known as Moral Ascending arcs. The point of an enlightenment arc is that the character experiences a positive internal ch

Stories with dual, or multiple timelines, make a frequent appearance across media. From Arrival (2016) to Citizen Kane (1941), dual timeline stories are a mainstay in Hollywood. However, for writers, how do you successfully execute multiple timelines with only the written word in your toolkit? This blogpost will explore the core problems presented by using a dual timeline narrative structure and how to best navigate those pitfalls to pull off an amazing multiple timeline stor

What is Stream of Consciousness? The American Psychological Association uses the stream of consciousness as a metaphor for the loose, flowing, and relatively unstructured form of our thoughts. For example, as I’m writing this blog I’m reminded of all the times I’ve written essays for school. But if my thoughts were perfectly transcribed onto paper, they wouldn’t look like the structured sentences I’m currently writing. They would probably look more like this. “Words lines wor

Learn about the three-act structure and how to apply it to your writing.

Learn how to write a (decent) book review.