Reading a book is said to be like holding an entire world in your ha nds—and crafting these worlds is one of the most important skills for any writer to hone. Some writers draw inspiration from a familiar place when building their settings, like their hometown or where they currently live or a favorite vacation spot, weaving in sentimental and sensory details into an homage that invites readers to explore and get lost in it. But what if you want to set your story in a place y

Writing is often viewed as a solitary activity, something we do alone while we're hunched over our computers in the dead of night brooding as we wait for the muses to at last grace us with a dash of inspiration. But it takes a village to publish a novel. A story will go through so many hands before reaching bookshelves and, in my experience at least, some of the least talked about yet super-important are those of critique partners. Feedback from a critique partner, or CP, can

When a video game challenges you to make choices, there a different approaches you might take. You might go for the pragmatic choice, the one that gives you the greatest advantage going forward or grants the best rewards. You might go based on what you yourself would do in that situation. Or you might go with whatever your character would do. Sometimes, the outcome of that decision leaves you feeling less than proud of yourself. That's what happened with my recent, first-ever

Romance has a reputation for turning up the heat and getting steamy. It goes as far back as the bodice rippers we all know and love, the ones with the bare-chested men and women with dresses unbuttoned and—gasp!—shoulders exposed, caught in a passionate embrace, and it's only endured with the rise of BookTok. Although it seems the market is teeming with spicy romance, there are just as many sweet romances to be found. The exact degree the heat gets turned up to depends on the

Character names are a seemingly small but incredibly significant decision for writers. They can say a lot about who they are or hint at the themes of your story when there's a specific meaning or vibe associated with them. I'll willingly admit that my characters don't feel real to me until they have the perfect name. Everything else falls into place as I go, but my protagonists' names are a must-know thing before I can start drafting a new story. In this post, I'm sharing som

I have a confession to make: do you remember those icebreaker activities your teachers would make you do during the first day of school? The ones that nearly everyone I know loathed participating in? I secretly loved them. Even though there's nothing like the internal panic of your mind going blank when you're tasked with coming up with an animal that starts with the same letter as your first name (in addition to remembering all of the names and animals that were said before