Craft Articles

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Recent Posts

Plots, subplots, and other narrative threads

Do All Stories Need Subplot?

I thought it would be easy to define a subplot. And I was under the impression that all long-form stories pretty much require subplots. But it turns out that “subplot” might be a limited term, and a story with subplots circulating a main event-oriented plot is just one type of story.

The Art of Narrative Omission: Engaging Readers through Negative Space

The human brain is wired for completion. Show it the right shapes and it will conjure a sphere from nothing. Fiction works on exactly the same principle. In this piece I walk through the four elements where omission does the most work: action, information, motivation, and interiority.

Considerations for Dual POV

This is not a how-to article. You’ll find no prescriptions here. This is just an investigation of some of the artistic choices you might consider in creating a dual-POV story. If you’re writing dual POV, then you’ll have some decisions to make about how the characters come together, when they come together, and what exactly they share.