Richard Thomas

Storyville: Unreliable Narrators

What is an unreliable narrator and how can it affect your writing?
Nick Kolakowski

Big Bugs and Dead Astronauts: The Joys of a Non-Human Narrator

Fresh ideas can be learned from books told from a different perspective.

Clarity vs. Experimentation: A Letter To Myself

Does your work have a worthwhile story underneath the experiment? In other words, are you going to pay off the work a reader does to understand what’s going on?
Richard Thomas

Storyville: Young Protagonists—MG vs. YA vs. Adult

Some advice for writing young protagonists for Middle Grade, YA, and adult fiction.
Richard Thomas

Storyville: Leaving Room for the Reader in Your Fiction

Thoughts and advice on how to leave room for your readers when writing fiction.
Chuck Palahniuk

Consider This: Undecidability

Chuck Palahniuk talks about the unresolved, and how undecidability is always more scary than simply being told the answer.
Richard Thomas

Storyville: Fiction As Film—Writing Scenes That Are Visual

How can your fiction be as visual and engrossing as a film? Here are some suggestions.
Richard Thomas

Storyville: 15 Unconventional Story Methods

Here are 15 unconventional methods of telling a story. Why not stretch yourself?
Stephen Graham Jones

This is Not a Checklist: How to Write a Story

Some things to have taken into consideration while writing your story. Not rules, just after-the-fact guidelines.
Jon Gingerich

Write What You Don’t Know

Of all the rules that apply to fiction writing, perhaps none is more misleading than the common, banal adage that you should “write what you know.”
Taylor Houston

“I tell the truth, even when I lie.”: A Discussion of Unreliable Narrators

Can your narrator be trusted?? Reliable narrators are the norm, but unreliable narrators are great to read and fun to write.
Chuck Palahniuk

Submerging the “I”

In: Guts, Narrator
First-person narration, for all its immediacy and power, becomes a liability if your reader can't identify with your narrator. Discover Chuck's secret method for making a first-person narrator less obtrusive. Bonus: This essay includes the story 'Guts.'