Short Story
What is an Unreliable Narrator?: Penning the Prevaricating Protagonist
When you can’t trust the person who’s telling you a story, we typically refer to them as an unreliable narrator. An unreliable narrator is someone whose account of the story…
Read MoreWhat is Free Indirect Discourse? Writing the “Intimate 3rd Person”
Free indirect discourse is a narrative technique in which writers employ the third person POV with the intimacy of 1st person perspective. While this technique became popularized in the 20th…
Read MoreCapturing the Art of Storytelling: Techniques & Tips
It is hard to describe the art of storytelling, but you know good storytelling it when you read it. You read a passage of prose and it raises your arm…
Read MoreHow to Write Flash Fiction Stories
Like a lightning strike, flash fiction stories can be over in an instant—radically altering the terrain of the reader’s imagination. These bite-sized stories take a lot of style, skill, and…
Read MoreWord Play: Examples of a Play on Words
It goes without saying that writers are drawn to language, but because we love words so much, the English language is filled with word play. By interrogating the complexities of…
Read MoreHow to Come Up With Story Ideas
How do writers develop good story ideas? Sometimes, coming up with a story idea is the hardest part about writing fiction. Figuring out what to write about can be frustrating,…
Read MoreInciting Incident Definition: The “Why” of Fiction
“The inciting incident is how you get [your characters] to do something…. It’s the doorway through which they can’t return, you know. The story takes care of the rest.” —Donald…
Read MoreRevising and Editing for Creative Writers
Want to learn more about revising and editing? Check out our self-paced class The Successful Novel, which gives you the tools to write, revise, and publish the novel waiting to be…
Read MoreWhat is Theme? A Look at 20 Common Themes in Literature
When someone asks you “What is this book about?”, there are a few ways you can answer. There’s “plot,” which refers to the literal events in the book, and there’s…
Read MoreFlat Character vs. Round Character: Definitions and Examples
Every fictional person that populates books, movies, and plays falls into one of two categories: flat characters and round characters. Flat and round characters each fill important roles in works…
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