What it is and how you can write it — You’ve probably read something written in an epistolary style whether you realized it or not. The problem is that if you haven’t realized it is that you are missing out on a point of view tool you can be used as a writer. Once you do realize, you may be…

Understanding what is useful from what is garbage — Writing rules for creative writing and prose are all over the place. And I am not innocent of proliferating them… although I think I try to add a more nuanced and moderate angle, and I always point out exceptions. Still, anyone who has hung around creative writing spaces either online…

A contradictory piece of advice against the common creative writing adage — One piece of common creative writing advice for fiction that gets thrown around a lot and that I vehemently disagree with is that writers should not reread their projects as they go. Rather, they should storm ahead to the finish line without looking back. This is a piece of advice…

Two things fiction writers just need to do — Writing the first draft of a short story or another creative project can be as enticing as it is intimidating. New ideas are exciting! Getting those ideas onto paper in a way that reflects how awesome they are in your head? That’s the struggle. As you plunge into writing a…

What to cut when editing your fiction — All prose writers need to do it sometimes: Edit, edit, edit. When it gets down to the nitty-gritty of the language, you shouldn’t just have an eye our for correct grammar and punctuation. You should also keep an eye for these four things… Fluff and filler words Fluff and filler words are all the…

Exploring a new publishing avenue for your old fiction — So you’ve reached a hard-earned goal — you’ve published your short story in a literary magazine. All the writing, the editing, and the rounds of submissions and rejections, edits and contracts, have finally culminated with your creative words in print, with some editors somewhere saying, “Hey, out of the hundreds…

Setting the scene (and mood) with the weather — Weather is an inherent part of setting. Wherever you go, there is weather, even if it is being contained outside when you are inside. (Nevermind the effect weather has on indoor environments — Is the HVAC broken in the middle of summer? Is the windstorm making the electricity flicker?) However…

How to make your prose original and interesting — Creative writers can divide clichés in fiction into two broad categories: cliché story elements (such as character archetypes, plot twists, and so on) and cliché language (metaphors, turns of phrase, descriptions, and so on). This article will be addressing the latter of these two: cliché language — the common turns…