Fiction Writing | Writing Forward

From 101 Creative Writing Exercises: Chekhov’s Gun

Today’s post is from my book, 101 Creative Writing Exercises, which is available from your favorite online bookseller in paperback or as an e-book. This is from chapter six: “Storytelling,” and it’s called “Chekhov’s Gun.” Enjoy! Chekhov’s Gun Chekhov’s Gun is a literary device in which an element is mentioned in a story and its…Read More

From 101 Creative Writing Exercises: Your Gang

Today’s writing exercise comes from my book, 101 Creative Writing Exercises, which takes you on an adventure through the world of writing. You’ll explore different forms and genres while learning practical writing techniques. You’ll also get plenty of writing experience and ideas for publishable projects. Each chapter focuses on a different form or writing concept: free…Read More

Your Characters Aren’t Your Children

Please welcome guest author Joshua Danton Boyd with a post on character development in fiction writing. For writers, characters can be very personal creations. Despite being taken from the ether, we can become attached to them, especially if we’ve been working on their story for years. With all the time and effort put into crafting…Read More

The Indie Edge in Fiction

Please welcome guest authors Evan Marshall and Martha Jewett with a post about indie publishing and the many benefits it offers fiction writers. This post contains affiliate links that earn commissions for this website from qualifying purchases. A number of clients of Evan’s literary agency have begun to self-publish, or indie-publish, as a supplement to…Read More

What Are Plot Points?

Please welcome author K.M. Weiland with a guest post on structuring your novel. Take moment to think of some of the most significant scenes in your favorite stories. More than likely, the scenes that pop to mind are those in which major events occur: Jane meets Mr. Rochester, the Titanic hits the iceberg, Darth Vader…Read More

The Sweet Highs And Sugar Crashes of Writing with a Bestseller

Please welcome guest author Tony Vanderwarker, who has generously shared his experience studying writing under his mentor, best-selling author John Grisham. A while ago, having been asked to introduce friend and neighbor John Grisham at a writers’ retreat, I took the opportunity to give the audience a peek into John’s incredible plot development machine. As…Read More

The Protagonist Problem: why is the hero or heroine so often the least interesting character in the book?

This post contains affiliate links that earn commissions for this website from qualifying purchases. Please welcome David Corbett, author of The Art of Character, with a guest post that explores common problems with protagonists in fiction writing. Catch them in an unguarded moment and many writers will confess that villains and secondary characters are much…Read More

The Five Rules of Writing Flashbacks

Please welcome author Stuart Horwitz with a guest post on writing flashbacks. “Flashback” is a term that we are all familiar with, even if its definition has grown a little vague. We sense that a flashback is something that happened before…but happened before what? Where we are now? In other words, what are we flashing…Read More

5 Ways to Use Narrative Viewpoint in Fiction Writing

Please welcome today’s guest writer, N. Strauss, editor of the website Creative Writing Now. Narrative point of view is the perspective you use to tell a story. It’s like the location of the camera in a movie scene. You can write a story from the point of view of just one character so that the…Read More

10 Tips to Improve Your Fiction Writing Skills

This post was contributed by Kelly Kilpatrick, who writes on the subject of distance learning universities. Writing fiction, whether short or long, can be a very trying experience indeed. So many writers of fiction have different processes for achieving their writing goals that it’s hard to sift through what works and what doesn’t. Writing is…Read More