Category: Narrative Craft

Some of the best writing happens when you’re not writing. You step away from the desk, fully intending to come back in ten minutes, and suddenly you’re washing dishes, reorganizing your bookshelves, scrolling through obscure Wikipedia pages. Hours pass, and you tell yourself you’ve wasted time—but have you? Because somewhere in the background of all…

Writers swear their characters aren’t based on them. They insist that the brooding detective, the ambitious young artist, the isolated scholar—none of them are self-inserts. They’re just characters. Made up. Fictional. And yet… something familiar lingers in them. A particular fear. A private longing. A personal flaw, magnified. This is Doppelgänger Fiction—the strange, sometimes unconscious…

Some desks feel different. You sit down, and something shifts. The mind clears. The words come faster, easier. It’s not just a piece of furniture—it’s a place where books are born, where stories take shape, where thoughts crystallize into something real. For many writers, their desk isn’t just a workstation—it’s a talisman. A sacred space…

Some writers won’t start without a specific pen. Or a certain notebook. Or a ring they twist on their finger between sentences. They swear by these objects—not just as tools, but as something more. A charm. A key. A physical tether to creativity itself. It sounds superstitious, but it’s common. Many writers, from novelists to…

Some writers feel different when they write under a pen name. The words come easier. The style shifts. The voice feels like it belongs to someone else. This isn’t just about privacy or marketing. Some authors report that switching to a different name actually changes the way they think and write—as if adopting a new…

Fairy tales are everywhere. We tell them to children, reimagine them in books and movies, reference them in everyday life. But the oldest fairy tales—the ones that came long before Disney, before the Brothers Grimm, before they were ever written down—weren’t just bedtime stories. They were warnings, lessons, and sometimes, secret messages. There’s a theory…

Stories are transformations. A character starts as one thing and ends as another. A world breaks and is remade. A truth is buried, then unearthed. This arc—the process of something becoming something else—isn’t just a narrative device. It’s alchemy. Alchemy wasn’t just about turning lead into gold. It was a system of transformation, a belief…

Some stories were never meant to be read. Others were meant to be found. Throughout history, writers have hidden messages inside their work—sometimes to preserve forbidden knowledge, sometimes to mock authority, sometimes just for the sheer thrill of knowing that someone, somewhere, might one day uncover the truth. Invisible ink isn’t just a spy novel…

There’s a particular kind of unfinished book that doesn’t just sit in a drawer—it lingers. You put it away, convinced you’ll come back to it later, but later never comes. Still, the book doesn’t feel gone. It hovers. You think about it at odd moments. Certain sentences flash in your mind. A character whispers something…

Have you ever started writing a story, only to feel like the story itself is resisting you? The characters refuse to follow the outline. The plot keeps twisting in ways you didn’t plan. The book starts developing a mind of its own, pushing back against your decisions like some self-aware entity testing the boundaries of…