plot and structure

Why your story needs visible and invisible narratives Stories are rarely just about what happens on the surface. The best narratives work on more than one level—they have an external plot that keeps us turning pages or glued to the screen, but underneath that is a deeper, often invisible emotional journey. This is what I

Discover how subplots enhance your novel and learn how to create secondary storylines that support the main plot without overshadowing it

The unnecessary prologue: How to avoid the info-dump trap I keep hearing that the publishing industry is fed up with prologues. I keep seeing new novels with prologues get published.  Clearly, the publishing industry is not so fed up with prologues that it won’t publish novels with prologues. So what gives? Well, I’m not a

Keep your fiction writing fresh by cutting down on info-dump. Learn how to use exposition that holds readers’ attention and moves your story forward.

How much backstory is too much? You may have heard it said that prologues are falling out of favour in the publishing industry. Like just about every rumour of its kind (“Publishers and agents are fed up with first-person present-tense narratives!” or “Young Adult dystopian fiction is on its way out…”) this one isn’t really