From Zero to Published: Your First Book

Most writing advice tells you to start with an outline. Build the skeleton, then add the flesh. Plan your ending before you write your beginning. ...

External Want: What Your Character ChasesIn 1936, Margaret Mitchell published Gone with the Wind. Eighty-eight years later, people still argue abou...

The Physical Layer: What Your World Looks LikeMost writing advice says world-building comes first. Design the map, invent the history, codify the m...

Every year, over 300,000 people sign up for NaNoWriMo -- National Novel Writing Month -- determined to write an entire novel in November. Fewer tha...

Three months of preparation, and the blank document is still blank. The protagonist has a name, a backstory, a wound that drives everything. The w...

"I know there are problems in it. I just can't see them yet. But when I come back, those problems will be clear -- like finding a body in an otherw...

Most writers believe revision means reading through the manuscript once, catching typos, smoothing clunky sentences, and calling it done. The truth...

In 2013, a team of cognitive scientists at the University of Liverpool ran an experiment that should worry every writer alive. They gave authors th...

Three readers said the pacing in chapter seven was too slow. A fourth said the protagonist's decision in the climax made no sense. A fifth -- the o...

The worst thing that can happen to a novel isn't rejection. It's never leaving the writer's hard drive. Ninety-seven percent of people who start w...