Let’s geek out for a moment. Marvel Studios’ latest blockbuster, Avengers: Endgame, is neck-and-neck with James Cameron’s Avatar for the title of highest grossing film ever and the “superhero fever” critics claim won’t last long doesn’t seem to be subsiding anytime soon. A question I wanted to examine is what fiction writers can learn from the success of comic book adaptations? The answer has to do with world building and the omniscient point of view. Last month I picked up … Read More »

When writing a novel leaning heavily on suspense, nothing is more important than structure. At the most basic level for a reader, tension is developed by the desire to learn something new about a main character or the plot. Good structure can aid the author in releasing details gradually to leave readers satisfied by the end of a story. Think of structure like cropping a photograph. While on vacation you snap a massive landscape shot, but when publishing it on … Read More »

If you’ve ever been blown away by the work of Gillian Flynn, Ian McEwan or Kazuo Ishiguro, then you’re familiar with the unreliable narrator. This is an elusive technique many writers emulate, but it’s not as easy as they make it seem. A narrator’s unreliability can stem from insanity, addiction, perversion, greed, or plain ignorance, and more often than not a combination of each. Take Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. This book continues to be highly controversial (for … Read More »