Every writer needs to learn dialogue from the great writers preceding them. This post isn’t about how to punctuate dialogue, or the basics of how to write dialogue, but more advanced techniques, as shown by established authors. It doesn’t matter what genre you write: every writer needs to improve their dialogue. And whether you’re writing […]
Nothing ruins a story faster than bad dialogue. Good dialogue, on the other hand, can be tricky to write. It takes more than putting the quotation marks in the right place and adding some dialogue tags. But Bookfox is here to help. In this post, we cover all the tips, tricks, and secrets you need […]
Writing a novel can feel like staring into the void. When you’re sitting in front of a blank page, anything could happen, and that feeling is both freeing… and terrifying. This is where a good story structure comes in. As it turns out, experts say that limitless possibility might not actually be the best for […]
The query letter has one job–to get the agent (or the publisher, if you’re going that route) to read the pages you sent. This means it doesn’t necessarily have to be brilliant, it just has to work. How to write a query letter that works? There are eight parts of a query letter: hook pitch […]
You build a character by separating them from the mass of humanity. Making them an individual, rather than a face in the crowd, is the main challenge of writers. A mannerism is one of the best ways to make a character memorable. Just a single unusual or curious affectation can make them stick in the […]
How well do you know your characters? You’ve probably asked yourself some form of this question before. Most successful writers spend time delving into the characters who populate their pages. Countless resources exist (such as Bookfox’s “4 Character Questionnaire Tests—Can You Pass Them?”) to help you create characters rich in backstory, motivation, and personality—just like […]
What you’re about to read is unlike anything else on Writer’s Block. The vast majority of other articles are written by freelancers who pick a few ideas off the top of their heads and slap them into a blog post. Most of them are recycling the same old familiar ideas – take a walk, take […]
Here are my 40 favorite books about writing, the books I’d swear by and beg you to read. These books help me feel like I’m not alone. They help me work through problems I didn’t even know I had. And they give me enormous amounts of courage to keep pressing on. After reading more than […]
Look, this is basically a list of 100 Things Every Writer Should Do Before They Die. How many have you already done? Some of them are pretty ambitious — reading 100 books in a single year is difficult, no doubt. While others like “write fan fiction” or “go to a reading” have a much lower […]
In every author’s life there comes a moment when they must slaughter one of their creations. Yep, you’ve got to kill one of your characters. I know, I know, you love them, you’ve created them, and yet for the sake of the story and for the sake of the reader, they need to bite a […]
