Today’s post is by author, editor, and book coach Suzy Vadori. When you’re reading your own words during an editing pass, your brain works against you in two ways: Your fears can take hold. When this happens, you might be hard on yourself, worrying that everything you’ve written is garbage. This can lead you to over-edit...

Photo by Antoni Shkraba Today’s post is by author Caroline Leavitt (@carolineleavitt). I’m sitting at a table talking to a friend when they tell me this astonishing, deeply compelling story about what happened to them when they were 15 and they had committed a murder, and yes, they did it, and yes, they served time. Early released,...

Photo by Erin Larson on Unsplash Today’s post is by writer Mirella Stoyanova (@mirellastoyanova). There are a select few life lessons that I am fated to learn the hard way. As a therapist, a trauma survivor, and a consummate people pleaser (not to mention a woman), setting healthy boundaries is one of them.  So I should...

Photo by Eduardo Sánchez on Unsplash Today’s post is by editor Tiffany Yates Martin (@FoxPrintEd). Join her for the three-part online class Mastering Backstory for Novelists. Like a genie in a bottle, flashbacks can be wonderful and terrible things. They can grant you phenomenal power—painting in backstory other characters may...

One of the key pitfalls of backstory, especially early in a novel, is either confusing backstory or overly coy and “mysterious” backstory. Here’s what it looks like. In the enigmatic town of Serenity Falls, nestled deep within the embrace of towering pine forests and shrouded in perpetual mist, secrets were as abundant as the whispers...

Photo by Deborah Springstead Ford Today’s guest post, which originally appeared in January 2018, is by author and editor Melanie Bishop (@melbishopwriter). April 4, 2024 update: As many people travel this weekend to the path of totality, several friends and readers have asked for the link to this essay that I wrote about the 2017...