Richard Thomas

Storyville: What We Can Learn From Reading Bad Fiction

What can a bad story teach us? Turns out, it's a lot.
Andrea J. Johnson

You’re A Writer, But Is MasterClass Right For You?

MasterClass offers numerous courses for aspiring writers. But are such classes worth the investment? This article seeks to address that concern and give you a brief overview of some of the sessions.
Joshua Isard

Showing and Telling, and Trusting the Reader

We all know the cliche, "show don't tell," but it's still a common issue with young writers. That's where trust comes in.
Richard Thomas

Storyville: Avoiding Purple Prose in Your Fiction

How to avoid writing purple prose.
Rob Hart

Top 10 Storytelling Cliches Writers Need To Stop Using

There are certain storytelling clichés writers go back to again and again. And they shouldn't. Because they are terrible, and they need to be destroyed.
Jon Gingerich

Cliche, the Literary Default

Stories start from a default position of cliché: readers go into stories with expectations, and if too many are fulfilled the spell is broken. So, how do writers engage when the odds are against them?
Chuck Palahniuk

Learning from Clichés… then Leaving them Behind

In: Cliche
To achieve excellence, a writer must learn to identify and eliminate clichés. Chuck demonstrates the use of placeholders where more inventive language is needed, while counter-intuitively recommending style mimicry as a positive stage of learning.