Posted on October 20, 2026 at 12:00 PM by Sadye Scott-Hainchek
The publishing experts we follow have plenty of craft advice to offer.
Here are the ones that we thought were can't-miss for our authors:
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Should writers pay to have their work edited?: Of course editor and writing coach Jill Boehme's answer is yes, but her post clarifies the different types of editing and which ones she recommends prioritizing (Writers Helping Writers).
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Writing authentic female characters across three generations: Author Gerilyn Bass Greenberg tapped into her own experiences and those of the women in her lives in order to bring her novel to life (Women Writers, Women's Books).
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Write against the machine: There are definitely spoiler alerts in Dave King's piece about mystery novels that defy genre conventions — and are all the more compelling for it — but it's worth hearing his belief that this human ability is what will continue to set human writing apart from AI-generated works (Writer Unboxed).
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How to make a character's past drive the present: Author Harry Hunsicker outlines how a few motivations — guilt, shame, and bias — can influence the way a person behaves and then analyzes how the novels Mystic River and God of the Woods use the past to power the present (Writer's Digest).
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What many novelists get wrong about preparation: Writer, editor, and book coach Karmen H. Špiljak discusses shifting the way she thought about the pantser-versus-plotter binary after reading Anne H. Janzer's The Writer's Process (Jane Friedman).
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