The Literary Mercenary

When your story has a main character, they are referred to as the protagonist of your story. A deuteragonist (a word a lot of us haven't...

Writers strive to avoid using cliches whenever they can. This is generally a good practice, but something I've found throughout all my c...

I didn't realize until I was an adult that there's a significant portion of the reading public out there who will read the same book...

Over the past several years I've met a lot of writers and hopeful writers who have come to me for advice. Sometimes it's because I...

A lot of authors will tell you that all tropes are bad, and you should do your damnedest to scrape them out of every line of your manuscript...

When we sit down to build worlds, we tend to focus on the big, sexy topics. How does magic work in this strange, new world? What forces powe...

If you're an author, then chances are you want your stories to stand out. You want to be thought of as new, unique, fresh, and different...

Think about the last time you were reading a book, and just as the third act really got going it was revealed that the villain's actions...