Craft
Craft

Craft

These articles concentrate on the craft of writing. Use the menu on the right to get more specific or just browse them sequentially.

Building Magic Systems

My husband wrote a Business for Breakfast book about World-Building Space Opera. Recently, while we were going for a drive (as we do) and talking about the next B4B book he’s writing, he asked me if I’d consider writing a business book on how to create magic systems. I thought about it and decided that it wasn’t as big of a topic. Instead, I’m going to try to cover it all in a long(ish) essay. One note: There are exceptions to everything I say here. I’ll try to include those as well. I don’t want to come across as saying...

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You Need To Try Writing Sprints! 

My recent introduction to writing sprints I’ve been writing my entire life. And some of that has included writing very fast for short periods of time. I used to write a 1,500 word article on poker strategy and applied game theory for a magazine every month in less than an hour. But I had never tried an organized writing sprint until a few weeks ago. It was amazing!  I joined Adam’s writing sprint along with another member named Ari. We did three 20 minute sprints, talked about what we were working during the rest periods, and the last any of...

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Improve Your Writing With AI Tools

Aspiring authors have a powerful new tool at their disposal: AI-powered writing tools. These aren’t just grammar checkers; they’re sophisticated assistants that can accelerate the improvement of your craft, helping you polish your manuscript and connect with readers faster than ever before. For self-published authors, time is precious. You’re juggling writing with marketing, cover design, research, ad campaigns, and everything else that goes into bringing a book to market. AI tools can streamline the editing process, allowing you to focus on the creative aspects of your story, but more important is how fast you can learn from the suggestions these...

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Ellis Prybylski Talks Editing

We had a great talk with our old friend Ellis Prybylski this week. Ellis has been a writer and editor for sixteen years, has written multiple books on the subject, and is the head of multiple industry associations. His insight into the world of editing and self-publishing is amazing and we’re lucky to have him as a member here on Written Well. You can find Ellis and most of his fiction work on Amazon at his author page. His books on writing and editing are How To Write The Damn Book and How To Publish The Damn Book Ellis is...

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Writing Great Dialogue

Taking up as much as half of a book, dialog might be the most important part of writing to master. And it is far more likely that readers will remember what a character said, rather than how great a certain description was. But how do you write great dialogue, and how do you do it consistently? Dialogue Isn’t Speech Note that the title of this article is writing great dialogue, not writing realistic dialogue. Great dialogue sparkles, illuminates character, provides worldbuilding, moves the plot along, and creates memorable scenese for the reader. It is often, however, not very realistic. Real...

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The Three Act Story Structure

The Three Act Story Structure is one of the most basic story structures and one of the most useful, in my opinion. It gives the author plenty of room for inspiration, innovation, and invention while still keeping them on track to an exciting and satisfying conclusion. Some may need a more detailed plan (the 27 chapter structure extrudes this structure into granular detail), but for those who seek only a little order to help them tell their tale, this structure does the job.

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The 27 Chapter Structure

The 27 Chapter structure is kind of a recursive version of the Three Act Structure, breaking down the three parts of each act into three chapters so that there are twenty-seven chapters. But the form of the three-act is still in there with the inciting incident, the plot twist, the midpoint, all falling in roughly the same spot as the three-act. It’s a good structure to reference if you’re lost or running out of ideas in the middle of the book. It can help you understand a little better how to move through the three-act structure — or any structure....

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How to Avoid Cliched Phrases

Cliches are sneaky little things. The commonness that makes them cliches also makes them hard to spot; we use them so often in our normal life, we write them without thinking. “It was raining cats and dogs.” “He was bored stiff.” “I’m down in the dumps.” They are all descriptive and everyone will know what you mean, but use them too often and readers will eventually be bored with your prose. I’d rather have someone hate my book than be bored by it. Here’s some simple methods to remove cliches from your writing. 1. Use strong words Cliche phrases are...

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Not F*cking Up Sex Scenes: Making Love Make Sense

If your sex scene isn’t integral to the plot, then you’re not doing it right. Maybe you’ve heard that sex is just supposed to happen every fifty or a hundred pages. Wrong. Even if what you’re writing is erotic romance, the moment needs to be right, and something should happen to move the characters along or the scene will fall flat and feel gratuitous. The most important thing about writing a sex scene is remembering that it is, in fact, a scene like any other in your novel.  That means that all the same rules apply. When writing sex, you...

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Using the Appropriate Amount of Realism in Your Writing

Like everything else in writing, the appropriate amount of realism is going to be very genre dependent. If you’re writing a gritty crime story, you’re going to want a lot of it; a fairy tale romance, maybe not so much. But how do you decide how much realism is right for your story, and how do you go about putting it in (or taking it out)? Let’s start with some examples. The first is from a story I was critiquing that was written by a very good writer. And one of the things this writer does extremely well is write...

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