Writing Archives | Page 5 of 5 | NINC

As we enter our third year of the pandemic, writers of contemporary fiction face a dilemma: to write about the coronavirus or not.* In the past, diseases have formed a backbone for artistic storytelling—tuberculosis in La Bohème, for example, or AIDS in Angels in America—written while the maladies they discuss continued to spread uncontrolled. But are contemporary audiences ready to face storie…

Plot structures are not new. Everything from Greek tragedies to Shakespearean plays have been written in three- or four-act structures and their timing measured in beats. There are a ton of books and videos on the topic. Vonnegut shared his now famous “Shape of Stories” lecture. Bradbury, Harlan, Orson Scott Card, Kevin J. Anderson, and many others willingly share their own favorites and advice…

Oh, sexual tension. What is it? Why do we need it? Is it that important? I’m going to explain it. I’ll explain that, too. And bite your tongue, yes it is! Encyclopedia.com gives us a clear and accurate definition, especially as pertaining to romance as “… often hidden or suppressed feelings of anticipation, excitement, attraction, and desire that may occur in relation to another person … a nece…

Focus. Discipline. Choice. Manifesting. Positivity. As 2021 gave way to 2022, authors picked these and other powerful single words to use as their theme and guide this year after deciding enough was enough. Because, let’s face it, the past couple of years have been…a lot. We’ve faced a global pandemic, social unrest, and a level of ugliness that has made it difficult to focus on anything other …

If you want your story to connect with the reader and be memorable, it’s not enough to simply tell a story and explain the characters’ feelings. Instead, you need to immerse your reader in a myriad of emotions to experience the story and really make them really feel. So if you have ever received feedback such as: I didn’t connect with the characters or The story lacked emotional depth, or perha…