Writing a book and struggling to make either a good book or powerful characters? I have original and useful ideas. Possibly wrong, but definitely helpful. What are characters for? In the book "How to Write a Damn Good Novel", James Frey says: Characters are to a novelist what lum…

This article deals with writing, editing, proofreading, and self-publishing a book, in a variety of forms. Writing itself Before you can publish it you have to write it. There are two ways you can do this: write it yourself or have it ghostwritten by someone else. Generally, writ…

Dialogue is a conversation between two people. Jill: How are you Jack? Jack: I'm good, Jill and you? Jill: Not good Jack. Not good at all. Dialogue in fiction should be *indirect.* Dialogue often has to do two or three things at once. - It has to reveal facts. (This is calle…

There's a long long tradition, dating back at least five years, of reimagining a movie to have a different premise, generally in which one or all characters are dead, imaginary, or linked in an unexpected way, possibly involving time-travel. "This amazing pixar fan theory" -- Pi…

Writing can sing. Writing can soar. How do writers elevate their craft to carry you along with their words? I've never known, until I read this: This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to…

I've worked out a proper grand unified theory of story telling, and it's much simpler than all the old theories. The Search for the Grand Unified Theory of Story Telling Some people analyze stories and say things like: There's a plot, and there's a story. The plot is just what…

Consider the The Big Five Personality Traits, i.e. Openness to experience (inventive/curious vs. consistent/cautious) Conscientiousness (efficient/organized vs. easy-going/careless) Extraversion (outgoing/energetic vs. solitary/reserved) Agreeableness (friendly/compassionate vs.…

There are two kinds of male action heroes -- the tough guy and the pretty boy. The key to the tough guy is not what he does to other people but what other people do to him. In particular: he can take a punch. The defining feature of action hero stories is that the hero *does* …

It is hard to find practical guides to doing anything magical. Magicians don't like to reveal where to place the hinges or what to feed your pet dove. So I like it when an article gives away the secrets, like this one: Charles Finch: "Writing Great Mystery Plots" Here's the kern…

Rules for writers, from writers. One of the first blog posts I wrote on secretGeek was "How to write a novel". This was an entirely tongue in cheek article with advice on what *not* to do. A lot of people read it, and it was linked from Wikipedia for a while. But eventually thei…