Richard Thomas

Storyville: What We Can Learn From Reading Bad Fiction

What can a bad story teach us? Turns out, it's a lot.
Joshua Isard

Walter Mosley, Natural Language, and Empathy

Everyday language is a way to understand different kinds of people. Diving in to those differences is vital.
Gabino Iglesias

Writing Tips From the Don Winslow Universe

Certain writers demand to be read, and doing so is a class to all who do. Don Winslow is one of them.
Gabino Iglesias

What Reviewing Nonfiction Taught Me About Writing Fiction

Reviewing nonfiction taught me a few tricks that helped improve my approach to writing fiction.
Susan DeFreitas

Dialogue: The Number One Mistake Newbie Writers Make

There's no lack of online advice about how to write dialogue in fiction. But there’s one issue I see over and over in the dialogue of newbie writers, and I have yet to find one post that tackles it.
Gabino Iglesias

10 Tips to Help You Write Believable Dialogue

Dialogue can make or break a novel. Here are some pointers to help you write better dialogue.
Richard Thomas

Storyville: Putting Your Life in Your Fiction

Some helpful tips for working your life into your fiction.
Richard Thomas

Storyville: Three Essential Books On Writing

Three essential books on writing by Stephen King, Donald Maas and Jeff VanderMeer.
Chuck Palahniuk

Nuts and Bolts: “Thought” Verbs

You've always heard the maxim, "Show, don't tell..." but almost no writing teacher ever explains... How. Discover how to strengthen your prose by unpacking abstract and static verbs into descriptive action.
Taylor Houston

Talk It Out: How To Punctuate Dialogue In Your Prose

Quotations marks, italics, em dashes, or none of the above: these are a few different ways to punctuate dialogue in your prose.
Richard Thomas

Storyville: Writing Dialogue

What is the function of dialogue, and how do you make it sing?
Richard Thomas

Storyville: Narrative Hooks

Writing a great narrative hook isn't easy, but it's one way to grab your audience and never let them go.
Richard Thomas

Storyville: Writing About Sex

How do you write a good sex scene? By utilizing the right language, all five senses, and empathetic characters, you can seduce the reader into living the moment.
Stephen Graham Jones

As I Lay Mostly Dying

The baddest of the prose villains, that one word that, when mis-used, can single-handedly wreck an entire page of fiction for me, if not the whole piece: As.
Jon Gingerich

Writing Effective Dialogue

Writing authentic, compelling and engaging dialogue is one of the most vital yet misunderstood challenges of the writing process.
Chuck Palahniuk

Nuts and Bolts -- Punctuating with Gesture and Attribution

In: Dialogue
Smart actors use the stage business of peeling an apple or lighting a cigarette to create a layer of interest that dialogue alone can never convey. Learn to punctuate your dialogue with gesture and attribution to propel interest and achieve better pacing.
Chuck Palahniuk

Discon nected Dialogue: Part One

In: Dialogue
The temptation for new writers to answer every question raised in a fictional dialogue with a perfect, clever, instant response is very strong. Chuck demonstrates how this flattens the energy of a scene and what to do instead.
Chuck Palahniuk

Body Language: Part One

In: Dialogue
Leave it to Chuck to make an assignment of watching movies with the sound turned off... and have this make perfect sense. This essay explores gesture and movement as an important counterbalance to your dialogue.