You might be tempted to boss yourself into writing. But, it turns out, subterfuge is equally effective—and definitely way more fun. Try it out and see what happens to your writing. Then, you can get on with enjoying the rest of your life.

Author Nick Martell breaks down the challenges of writing fantasy fiction and offers five tips for writing a fantasy trilogy.

In almost any story, the villain plays just as vital a role as the hero. The antagonist is often the primary reason why the hero’s story is even worth telling. Without the villain, good has nothing to triumph over, nothing challenges the protagonist, and everyone just goes about their average lives.

Internal conflict draws readers in because it’s a type of struggle common to us all. It really takes center stage at the story level.

I’ve come to a sad realization: The creators of Amazon’s The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power know how to create spectacle, but they don’t know how to tell a good story. There it is, scrawled in blood on the wall. The writers and showrunners responsible for this show could have won me over with good fan-fiction. They could have tossed Tolkien’s lore onto a bonfire and I’d have been perfectly happy if they’d simply crafted an enjoyable story with characters I care about.

Authors can certainly be the victims of bad luck, lousy publicists, poor timing, tough competition, a crappy publisher, or a change in the marketplace. But most often, they sabotage themselves or they fail to overcome challenges and setbacks.

One of the most frequent things I find myself writing on students' manuscripts is "Who says this?" I did a big post on writing dialogue a couple of years ago, so this is a round-up of solutions to this specific problem of making sure the reader knows which character says what.

We all know how important it is to build fully-fleshed characters by digging at their core. Exposing their attributes, flaws, morals, emotional wounds and fears that revolve around their basic human needs will influence their goals and desires within the story.

There are so many films based on books. You, too, might want to turn a novel into a movie. This complete guide offers 11 screenplay-writing tips to adapt a book into a movie.

There comes a time in most people’s lives, certainly in most writers lives, when they’ll need to start thinking about how to bury a body. A dead body that is. It can’t be that hard, can it? After all, we’ve seen them do it on TV. A brief shot of a spade (or is it a shovel?) in action, a brief cut in the film, and the body is next to the grave ready to be disposed of. The sides of the grave are always nice and neat and self-supporting as well, so how hard can it be?

Not knowing where to start is a problem countless writers before us have faced and figured out, so if you are feeling a bit lost when it comes to your big dream, these seven things can help you move forward and better yet, jumpstart your writing career.

You might be surprised by how many traits writers share with serial killers. FBI profilers have actually profiled a subject only to discover s/he’s not a killer. S/he’s a writer. Here’s why a profiler might mistake writers for serial killers.

Simply told and radiantly illustrated, his books have been story-time staples for decades.

Writing the plot for a story is never simple. If you are just starting out writing fiction, a template can help you get started and structure your outline.

The first ever mention of Sherlock Holmes came in A Study in Scarlet, published in Beeton’s Christmas Annual of 1887. Dr Watson is looking for lodgings, and meets an old acquaintance who knows of someone he could share with, but does not recommend.

The fantasy author has an army of devoted fans and a record-making Kickstarter - but before the bestsellers, he spent a decade being told to be ‘more like George RR Martin’

Flawed heroes, dark angels and dashed dreams: Why L.A. and noir are synonymous

Susanna Clarke, whose bestselling debut sold 4m copies, will publish her second book, Piranesi, in September 2020

US writer Carolyn Meyer was "blown away" by Taryn Everdeen's fan letter.

The first image David Chase had in mind for the show that became The Sopranos was a closeup of Tony Soprano opening his eyes, “waking up for the day”. That scene ended up falling later in the pilot. The opening scene, as any of the show’s superfans will happily inform you, watches Tony eyeing up a sculpture in a therapist’s waiting room with baffled rage.