Have you ever reread your own writing and found that it came across as flat, or even too familiar or uninspired (and not just because you've read it often)? The problem isn’t usually the characters or plot—it's language. We use certain words, phrases, and clichés all the time in everyday speech, so they easily make their way into our writing because they're simple and comfortable. But for readers, they can dull emotional impact and make even the most exciting scenes feel predictable. This...

For centuries, books were something you listened to before they were something you read. Stories passed from person to person orally, meaning the story lived within breath and cadence. Audiobooks haven’t invented this tradition but they have resurrected it. And that resurrection has consequences for how we write. Today, many readers will never see your carefully crafted prose. They’ll hear  it instead. Which means that writing solely for the eye is no longer enough. One way to approach...

Backstory is essential to fiction—but it’s also one of the easiest ways to stall or completely derail a narrative. Most writers, especially if they like to plan and outline, don’t struggle because their characters lack  backstory. They struggle because they have too much of it, or because they’re unsure when, where, and how to introduce it without stopping the story cold. The goal isn’t to eliminate backstory. It’s to integrate it seamlessly so that readers absorb it without feeling the...