Craft tips for authors: September 11, 2023

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: 

• How to write a detective story: Dave Chesson goes over how to write and publish in one of the best-selling fiction genres out there (Kindlepreneur).

• Searching for authenticity: David Corbett offers a number of questions to consider when writing a protagonist whose internal struggles come back to authenticity to their own self (Writer Unboxed).

• Five tips for helping readers empathize with your villain: Author Yasmin Angoe believes that there are no true heroes and villains and that roles can be reversed at any given moment, so she uses certain guidelines to make sure her readers don't fully loathe her foils (Writer's Digest).

• Five things about psychology that every fiction writer should know: Author Ashley Wurzbacher's research for a character who happens to be a social psychology PhD student provided her great insight into various aspects of writing as well as real life (Writer's Digest).

• Five principles for using multiple narrators in your novel: Author Edward Cahill shares the strategies he uses to make sure that his varying fictional voices provide both contrast and cohesion (Writer's Digest).

• Curiosity — the writer's magic: Author DiAnn Mills notes the eight qualities in a work she helped edit that, she believes, will keep readers of any book turning the pages eagerly to see what happens next and why (Live Write Thrive).

• Where should you start plotting your story?: You’re neither obligated to start writing or simply start your story in chronological order; K.M. Weiland provides some suggestions for how to know what point makes most sense as a launchpad for your plotting (Helping Writers Become Authors).

• The loner: Becca Puglisi describes the common qualities of this character type and how to avoid making it an empty cliché (Writers Helping Writers).