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Intro I talked last month about how I use inspiration from other creatives’ work, but inspiration isn’t the only way that other people’s stories have helped me as a writer. Reading—and experiencing stories through any other sort of media, for that matter—is also possibly the best way to learn how stories work. From basic plot…
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Intro All creatives—whether they’re a writer, an artist, or a musician—take inspiration from somewhere. And, a lot of the time—or, for me, most of the time—that inspiration comes from the work of other artists. Sometimes it’s a cool character that gets my gears turning, or an interesting plotline—it can be just about anything. A lot…
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Intro Whether they’re best friends, romantic partners, or mentor and mentee, I’ve always loved writing partners. Part of it probably comes from the fact that partners are a pretty common theme in the stuff that I like, but another part of it is just that they’re really fun to write. Two characters who are always…
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Intro If there’s one thing that can make a story feel more realistic, it’s the emotions of the characters. You can write the craziest, most ridiculous story, but, if you can make your characters’ emotions feel real, chances are that the story itself will feel more real too. You might be skeptical, but think about…
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Intro I’ve loved animals for pretty much as long as I can remember, so it’s only natural that they often play a role in the things that I write. Whether they’re loyal companions that do what they can to help their humanoid friends or pesky trouble makers that help lighten the mood, I don’t really…
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Intro I’ve always loved humor. From sarcastic remarks to panicked chaos, I appreciate all sorts of humor in the things that I read and watch—which, naturally, led me to wanting to incorporate humor into my own stories when I first started writing. Like with everything, writing good humor is a skill. To some people, it…
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Intro For some writers, picking a point of view for their stories might be a bit of an afterthought, something that they don’t really plan out. Other writers might just have a certain one that they always default to without even considering other options. There’s nothing wrong with either of these, of course, but I…
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Intro There are a lot of siblings in my stories. Come to think of it, most of my main characters have had at least one sibling, sometimes more. A lot of this probably comes from growing up with siblings myself, but there’s also just the simple fact that siblings can add so much to the…
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Intro When it comes to writing, I rarely ever go in without a plan. For shorter things, like flash fiction and short stories, that plan might just be a basic idea in my head of how events are going to play out but, for longer projects like novels, I usually need more than a basic…
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Intro As someone who has written mostly in the young adult genre, I have to write a lot of characters that are in their teens. The teenage years are, as we all know, an…interesting period of life. It’s a transitioning phase, full of both physical and mental change, which can be confusing and frustrating—all of…
