Write Better Fiction / 115 posts found
Dolen Perkins-Valdez: On History’s Untold Stories
Dolen Perkins-Valdez is the New York Times bestselling author of Wench and Balm. She was a finalist for two NAACP Image Awards and the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award for fiction, and was awarded the First Novelist Award by the Black Caucus of the ALA. Find her on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Dolen Perkins-Valdez Photo by Norman E. Jones In this post, Dolen discusses how a personal curiosity evolved into a fervent need to share in her new historical fiction novel, Take My Hand, her hope for other writers, and more! Name: Dolen Perkins-ValdezLiterary agent: Stephanie Cabot, Susanna Lea AssociatesBook title: Take […]
Using Real-Life Details to Ground Your Thriller Novel
If you are a writer or even an aspiring writer, you’ve almost certainly heard the phrase, “Write what you know.” And while I’m here to support that phrase, I’d also like to wallop it upside the head so it can stop being misinterpreted and overthought. (10 Myths of Writing About Crime) “Write what you know” is way too freaking broad, and it results in aspiring authors delving into extended detail of specific workplaces or unique life actions that people simply don’t want to read about. I don’t think “write what you know” should apply to your job. Very few readers […]
How Writing What I Knew Shaped My Debut Novel
A piece of my debut novel has been in me my whole life, aching to come out, begging me to find a way. Yet for many years, through many attempts—in poetry, in memoir, in short stories, and beyond—the right story wasn’t there. Until one day it was. Because on that day, I learned to lean into myself. The seed of the project I always knew was based on the story of Ukraine and its people, a story my family knew well. Yet seeds don’t always grow. Writing projects become manuscripts and manuscripts become books with work and dedication to one’s […]
The Moral Universe: The Importance of Morals in Storytelling
When I was a performer with the improvisational comedy group The First Amendment, we used to do an improv form called One Word Story, in which we told an improvised story one word at a time—that is, each cast member only got to say one word at a time. The stories could (and did) go horribly wrong, and often were very silly—but we could always pull it out in the end by saying, “The moral of the story is…” and then sum up the proceedings with some equally ridiculous moral (something like, “Always wear your galoshes during safe sex”). (Carole […]
6 Practical Tips for Writing Great Historical Fiction
In 2019, the New York Times Style Magazine declared that we are living in a “golden age” of historical fiction. Whatever the reason for this—be it our need to escape a horribly uncertain present or our fear of what the future might bring—as the author of six World War II-influenced novels, I am very happy that people want their fiction immersed in the past. (Entertaining With the Past: How To Write Engaging Historical Fiction) It is a genre, however, which can trip up the unwary writer: We are not, after all, describing times in which we have lived. With that […]
The Why of the Fight: FightWrite™
In this series on how to write fight scenes start to finish, we have looked at what fight scenes can do for your story, how the setting impacts the story and how to find weapons just about everywhere. What I haven’t gone over is truly what I should have written about right out of the gate. The only reason I didn’t is because I thought I had written on this two years ago. But I didn’t and I’m glad because its placement in this series is best. More important than where a fight takes place, what weapons are used or […]
Carole Lawrence: On the Vast Canvas of New York City History
Carole Lawrence is an award-winning novelist, poet, composer, and playwright. In addition to Edinburgh Twilight, Edinburgh Dusk, and Edinburgh Midnight in the Ian Hamilton Mysteries series, she has authored novellas, short stories, and poems―many of them translated internationally. She is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee for poetry and has won the Euphoria Poetry Prize, the Eve of St. Agnes Poetry Award, the Maxim Mazumdar playwriting prize, the Jerry Jazz Musician award for short fiction, and the Chronogram Literary Fiction Award. Her plays and musicals have been produced in several countries, as well as on NPR; her physics play, Strings, nominated […]
F.T. Lukens: On When the Writing Flows
F.T. Lukens is the author of In Deeper Waters and five young adult novels published through Interlude Press. Their book The Rules and Regulations for Mediating Myths & Magic was a 2017 Cybils Award finalist in YA Speculative Fiction, the Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Gold Winner for YA fiction, the Bisexual Book Award for Speculative Fiction, and on ALA’s 2019 Rainbow Book List. F.T. lives in North Carolina with their spouse, three kids, three dogs, and three cats. Visit them at ft-lukens.com. Find them on Twitter and Instagram. F.T. Lukens In this post, F.T. discusses the process of […]
Gilly Macmillan: On the Thrill of Letter Writing
Gilly Macmillan is the internationally bestselling author of several critically acclaimed, fan favorites, including What She Knew, The Perfect Girl, The Nanny, To Tell You the Truth, and more. She lives in Bristol, England. Find her on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Gilly Macmillan Photo by Celine Nieszawer Leextra In this post, Gilly discusses how a movie from the 1940s inspired her new thriller novel, The Long Weekend, how she navigated writing and researching a novel during a pandemic, and more! Name: Gilly MacmillanLiterary agent: Helen HellerBook title: The Long WeekendPublisher: William MorrowRelease date: March 29, 2022Genre/category: ThrillerPrevious titles: What She […]
3 Tips on How To Make Murder Funny in Fiction
How do you make murder funny? In fiction, that is. When I first started writing, I wrote mostly twisty, dark thrillers that involved a healthy (or unhealthy, depending how you look at it) body count. I had a lot of fun writing these thrillers, and I think that was part of the problem, because my critique partners came back with the same feedback over and over again. “Your characters are way too flippant about something as serious as murder,” they told me. (On Mining Humor From Family Dynamics in Your Writing) I tried to make my characters behave in a […]