How Can We Worldbuild on an Epic Scale?

Can we learn from big shared-world universes like Star Wars how to builcohesive epic-sized story worlds (without planning everything in advance)?

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How Can We Worldbuild on an Epic Scale?

Make Characters Unique with Layering

Somewhere along our learning curve as writers, we’re likely to come across the skill of layering. Layering can help us create unique characters, no matter how stereotypical or tropey they might be on the surface.

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Make Characters Unique with Layering

Brainstorming Your Story? Proactively Avoid Issues

After we finish brainstorming and start trying to assemble our ideas into a story, that’s the perfect point in our writing process to avoid major problems by questioning what story issues we might run into before we write too many words.

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Brainstorming Your Story? Proactively Avoid Issues

What Do You Want to Write But Haven’t Yet?

We often have more ideas for stories than we actually write, and somehow, we choose and prioritize. Why might we not write a story idea that we’re passionate about—and is there anything we can do to overcome those reasons?

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What Do You Want to Write But Haven’t Yet?

Breaking Down the Steps of Revision to Improve Our Storytelling

Recently, a blog reader asked me whether she should worry about her word count while she revised. Her question highlights how a better understanding of the revision process can help our storytelling.

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Breaking Down the Steps of Revision to Improve Our Storytelling

Story Development through Travel and Inspiration — Guest: Kelly Maher

Writers find inspiration everywhere. That’s one reason why travel can be very inspiring to us. Yet inspiration doesn’t always work out like we planned, and we might need to watch out for inspiration leading us astray.

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Story Development through Travel and Inspiration — Guest: Kelly Maher

Storytelling: It’s about Going Primal — Guest: Elizabeth Randolph

When we first start writing, we often learn lots of new “rules,” which can narrow our focus onto writing craft so much that we lose sight of storytelling. How can we regain that storytelling mindset?

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Storytelling: It’s about Going Primal — Guest: Elizabeth Randolph

Genre -Is- Worldbuilding

An article comparing the Arrival movie to its short story inspiration triggered me to see Genre differently. In short, our story’s genre is simply the worldbuilding “lens” we use to explore our story’s meaning.

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Genre -Is- Worldbuilding

Antagonists: What Is an Antagonist? — Guest: Kristen Lamb

All great stories are about one thing and one thing only—problems. More specifically? Every good story has one core problem in need of being resolved. Today, Kristen Lamb shares her insights into how problems, conflicts, and antagonists drive our story.

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Antagonists: What Is an Antagonist? — Guest: Kristen Lamb