If you’ve never heard the term “pantsed” it refers to an author flying by the seat of their pants as they write the story. They don’t sit down and plot, world-build, or create character backstories. No, they merely sit and see where the story takes them. That may sound terrifying…

Outlining; We all hate doing it, but it’s super important to do it one way or another. It helps give you an overall view of your story before you begin writing, and while you may be tempted to write out “a scene” (or ten), don’t do it. …

The Plot is Afoot Coming up with a plot for your story is often one of the hardest parts of writing a story. You can have the coolest setting in any genre with an awesome character to follow along with, but if you don’t have a plot, you don’t have anything. “But what is…

Creating a character is probably one of the most challenging things to do when writing a story, but also one of the most satisfying. Why is it so difficult to come up with new characters when you have so many options? What makes it so hard? …

One of the most important aspects of writing a story, and sadly, one newer authors tend to avoid like the plague. Why? Because of expectations. Having goals is a good thing, but if you don’t have the right mindset about those expectations, you end up feeling like a failure, and…

No matter whether you’re writing Fiction or Non-Fiction, it’s important to have a place that helps you unless your creativity when writing. …

Why does anyone want to write a book? — You spend countless hours slaving away, agonizing over people who don’t exist (especially as a fiction author), hoping you caught all the typos, had the perfect hair day for your author photo, and spent even more hours trying to not fall into a depressive state because you can’t find the…

Everyone has a story to tell. This is one of the foundational beliefs we hold when talking with people who tell us they want to write a book. It’s an important one, too, because not everyone believes this, which can become very discouraging to an aspiring author. …

As a Christian writing speculative fiction, I see this topic comes up quite a bit. Similar to the question of if Christian authors should label themselves as such, this topic causes quite the stir. Why? I’m going to explore the options I see presented and then give my thoughts on…