Craft
Finishing a draft, reading fiction closely, and fixing what’s wrong with your own.
Get Writing
Starting, keeping going, getting unstuck and finishing. Finishing is a different skill from writing well, and this is where we teach it.
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How to Finish Your F*&^%$G Novel
If you keep rewriting, researching and fixing instead of reaching the end, use this simple system to decide what needs fixing now and what can wait.
Understand Fiction
Craft explained through novels and films you have actually seen, read closely for what they teach.
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What Jaws Can Teach You About Writing Dialogue
Jaws shows why great dialogue starts with what each character wants. Learn how competing objectives create conflict, subtext and distinctive characters.
Fix Your Draft
Dialogue, exposition, scenes, character and revision: how to find what is wrong with a draft and what to do about it.
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I Gave AI a Bad Chapter. Here's What It Found and What It Got Wrong
We gave Gemini a deliberately flawed fiction chapter, challenged its critique and compared its feedback with a human edit. Here's where AI helped and where judgment still mattered.
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The Best AI Prompts Aren't Prompts. They're Conversations.
Stop asking AI to solve your novel for you. Learn how to use AI as a thinking tool to question ideas, diagnose problems and make better writing decisions.
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Stop Telling Me Everyone's Backstory
Too much backstory can kill a novel's momentum. Learn when readers need character history, when to hold it back and how to make them want it.
Using AI on a draft? AI for Writers has everything we’ve written about it.
Get the printable draft tracker
A one-page tracker for the draft you are on, plus one piece a week about finishing it.
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