Setting and Horror Certain things are true for all settings. If you want a sense of claustrophobic threat then small enclosed dark spaces ar...

I’ve been thinking about horror stories, about what elements are common to the genre. I had intended to do this all in one post, but it has ...

In previous posts  I’ve written about Lester Dent’s short story formula . Lester Dent was perhaps the best of the pulp-fiction writers of th...

Today I continue my series on how to create a memorable character.  In my last post ( How to Write a Genre Story: Character Introduction: Ex...

In a previous post, How to Write a Genre Story: Characters: An Introduction to Character Tags , I talked about why tags are important for ch...

What makes a character memorable? Deborah Chester writes in her article, Bonding with Your Characters : "We want readers to either love...

 Supporting Characters versus Main Characters We want some characters to be one-dimensional, characters such as the impatient pizza delivery...

( Note: I'm starting a series of interviews with other writers. If you would like to discuss being interviewed, please contact me on Twi...

Summary: Setting is an essential part of good writing because a well developed setting helps a writer show rather than tell. Each object in ...