How do I become a writer? How to be a writer? How do you tell if you’re a writer? These, and dozens more questions like them float around Internet – blog posts (sort of like this one), infographics, funny memes, tweets, status updates and the rest of the digital fodder we use to ask and find answers to every question we have. Obviously, these posts are aimed at...

The Mythic Guide to Characters is a new book all about guiding writers through the process of developing characters. And not just good characters, but inspiring and memorable characters. Written by Dr. Antonio del Drago from fantasy writing community and writer’s resource, Mythic Scribes, any writer looking for advice on developing characters will benefit from this book.

Story editing isn’t just a matter of doing a spell check and looking for grammatical errors or inconsistencies. While these nuts and bolts of the writing craft are important, the story editing process is all about moulding your draft into the story you had first envisioned when you felt that overwhelming compulsion to write it in the first place. In this article,...

In this writing exercise, we’re practicing how to write dialogue. Writing dialogue is one of the toughest things to get right in any writing. In some short stories, too much dialogue forces the story to lose its flow. In others, too little dialogue makes the characters can seem flat and boring.

When you’re reading a short story or a novel, it’s fairly simple to tell when dialogue isn’t working and the most tell-tale sign that a writer is no good at writing dialogue is when the reader notices the dialogue as distinct from the rest of the writing.

Dialogue should be smooth and flow seamlessly with the rest of the narrative. It’s all part of the same piece of work, after all.

For this writing exercise, we’re going to forget everything else that goes into story writing and focus purely on how to write dialogue.

The Writers of the Future short story competition is one of the most prestigious writing competitions for new and emerging fantasy and science fiction short story writers and is well worth considering for those looking to make a mark on this genre. Yes, this is technically the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future competition but the award has no formal links to...

Short story ideas are the foundation of the form. What does this mean? In any short story, whether it’s flash fiction or longer story, the core story concept is the most important thing for the writer to develop. Short stories are short (too obvious?!) so there’s never going to be a lot of room to properly develop a full range of characters or a range of...

Magazines and journals often receive thousands of short story submissions at a time, so submitting a story for publication can be a challenging process for the emerging writer. Even the best stories can be rejected. Sometimes the competition is just too steep, but other times staying out of the rejection pile could be as easy as paying careful attention to a few...