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 ...

I’ve been on a journey of sorts over the past decade. I wanted to understand--intellectually, but also on a blood and bone level--the elemen...

This post is part of a series on Lester Dent’s method for writing a short story . You might think: Why should I care? Well, all the short st...

I’ve already gone over Swain’s idea of a character’s dominant impression , now let’s talk about their dominant attitude. A character’s attit...

Characters--Homo Fictus--are the raw material from which stories are created, but who are these entities who populate our stories and how do...

In the last few posts I’ve discussed a story’s setting. Today I want to discuss a story’s setting and how it changes in the context of the h...

This post is a continuation of yesterday's post BUT in what follows I don't talk about horror stories. Alas. Horror stories are ver...

( FYI, this post is part of my How to Write a Genre Story series. By rights I should have titled it How to Write a Genre Story: Setting and ...

There are many stories that don't fit the hero’s journey. For example, the movies Psycho and The Princess Bride. And that's great! ...

How to Generate Conflict Conflict results from the clash of two things: a character's goal and the opposition to that goal. It follows t...