As I’ve noted in some of my comments to posts over the course of the past year, I’ve turned away from fiction to focus on playwriting. I actually began my writing career studying acting (I took no …

The most influential leaders, when asked what they do, answer by connecting their work with the passion that drives them to do it. Simon Sinek delivered this message in a 2009 TED Talk, Start with …

I notice it in many manuscripts: following the opening, a downshift in tension akin to a speed bump in the road. Momentum drops. The trudge of the middle begins. Listen to authors and the middle is…

A few weeks ago, on a rainy Sunday morning, my dog and I headed out for a quick walk before church. I do love the rain. Especially after a dry, slow-motion summer with smoky air and wildfires just …

After writing book-length fiction for 30 years, publishing for more than 10, and reading literally countless books, posts, blogs, and essays debating and discussing genre, I’ve finally condensed ev…

I’m currently deep in the revision trenches, which means I’m experiencing the unique joy of staring at a manuscript and wondering how the hell we got here. If you’re anything like me, you kno…

At a recent author event, a man named Bob stood up and asked me, “What is something you wish you knew?” The question seemed unfinished, so I asked Bob, “In regards to what? About what? …

Ah yes, the book review. That curious little thing inexplicably comprised of five stars and a couple clicks which, in an increasingly unkind and distractible world, feels like being at the mercy of…

Remember when there was a great deal of talk in writerly circles about crafting morally gray characters? Seems like I hear less of it these days. Makes me wonder if it’s due to the fact that we’re …

I attended my first high school reunion recently, and it was lovely to see classmates I hadn’t kept in contact with since graduation. I recognized almost everyone, although with a handful of faces,…

Earlier this summer, I got a text from a friend saying she had just finished a popular new book and had a “major need to process.” Another wrote to say she felt “offended and justified and angry an…

I turned sixty last week (still shocked by that number). Like many milestones, this one has me thinking honestly about how I want to spend the years ahead. I’m also about a third of the way i…

HELP my new book will be a out in a week, and I’ve been posting away on social media lately. I know it doesn’t make the biggest difference, but I also believe that if we’re…

The first job I got out of college, in 1982, was running a mass spectrometer at Columbia University’s geology lab.  This sounds impressive, but it was work you could train a relatively intelligent …

A secret in fiction, as in life, doesn’t have to be a bombshell like the revelation of a State secret, the identity of a ruthless killer, or the true nature of a historical event. It can be a quiet…

Email readers, heads up! For the full effect, pause after the excerpt and decide if you would turn the page? Vote and then scroll for the reveal! Trained by reading hundreds of submissions, editors…

Lately, I’ve been obsessed with angels. I have a character who needs to see them in order to heal. Maybe I need to see them, too. Maybe we all do. For some, angels are figments of the imagination, …

When you set your characters in motion, you inspire the reader’s hope that your story will also go somewhere. Orienting us to those characters and their setting with a block of description, t…

My summer began with rushing one of my sons to the emergency room for a very large kidney stone that required an overnight hospital stay, a stent, and a later surgery to dissolve the stone. It was …

Maybe ten years ago, I was golfing with my wife and her dad. Throughout our round, my father-in-law, who’s an avid golfer, had been giving my wife random tips that were meant, obviously, to improve…

When I wrote my practice novels (efforts so bad I even removed them from the drawer), I drew on passion, a bit of talent, and a great big fat desire to see my name on a book jacket. I was a wanna-b…

This summer I met one of my heroes. Or, I should say, he showed myself to me. You see, he is dead and yet he is not gone. I am alive and yet was not entirely aware of it. Not in his sense. Not unti…

There is no need to be coy here within our Writer Unboxed community, so I will say it plainly. Loss is on my mind today, as it has been since my mother passed away last month after a long journey w…

Please welcome multi-published author Kristina McMorris to Writer Unboxed as our newest contributor! Kristina is a New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestselling author of eight his…

Two well-known sayings from two different creative fields have been rattling around in my head for awhile now, and I think they wouldn’t leave me alone because when combined they clarify what can b…

Last month I asked you to help me distinguish between when satire lands effectively and when it merely mocks or punches down. Thanks to the generosity of this community, a robust conversatio…

Anyone reading this likely already knows that selling books is hard. According to a survey conducted by YouGov, only 27 percent of Americans over the age of 15 read at least one book in 2025. The s…

As I write this post, I’m less than five months away from the release of my eighth published novel, Perilous Beautiful World. I’m excited. I’m nervous. I’m trying to write another book. Because, as…

Did you guys see the video posted on WU last Tuesday? It’s our fearless leader, Editorial Director Therese Walsh, interviewing one of my all-time favorite contributors, Sarah Callender, in celebrat…

When I set out to start writing my first book in 2009, which turned into my debut novel, a vital bit of writing advice became my North Star in the whole process—a star that remains fixed to this da…

Email readers, heads up! For the full effect, pause after the excerpt and decide: Would you turn the page? Vote and then scroll for the reveal! Trained by reading hundreds of submissions, editors a…

There’s that moment when you receive a reply from a submission you’ve sent. Maybe you sent a short story to a magazine or competition or a manuscript to a publisher or agent. The email comes back (…

Hello, WU Community! Usually, when one of our contributors has a new book out, we celebrate with a Take Five post here at Writer Unboxed. But Sarah Callender has been part of the WU family since 20…

I recently had the privilege of being part of an amazing book event in Spain, as an author guest at the annual Celsius Festival held in the historic town of Avilés, in the Asturias region. The loca…

With the release of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey this summer and renewed discussion of its “complicated” hero (Emily Wilson translation), some of us have been taken back to that fraught decade p…

Sometimes, while sharing a memory with my husband of twenty-six years, I’ll interrupt myself to say, “But of course you’ve heard this before.” To that he always says, “But this is a good story. Tel…

Betrayal, greed, vanity, pride, impulsivity—all the human flaws that drive plots and create good stories are exactly that, flaws. I read a dozen books on my recent vacation, but two that stood out …

I’ve said before that I never found much enjoyment from the traditional hero versus villain story format—mostly due to its predictability and penchant for featuring characters who fit perfect…

The writing community has a metaphor for the way we seek agents: the Query Trenches. It describes that strange stretch between typing THE END and breaking through publishing’s first gate. Any autho…

If you’re worried about spoilers for 30-60 year old media, beware that this post contains major spoilers for both Shirley Jackson’s 1962 novel We Have Always Lived in the Castle and all seven…

An emotion is one thing: It’s the feeling one has in a moment. An emotional state is another: it’s the condition one is in for a more extended period of time. It’s the difference between, I’m so ha…

I’ve written before about when to move action offstage, and sex scenes are the most common candidate.  More often than not, it’s the characters agreeing to make love that moves the story forward.  …

Historical fiction, as defined by the Historical Novel Society, is any story written at least fifty years after the events described or written by someone not alive at the time of the story. The au…

In The Matrix, Neo is given the choice between two pills. The red will wake him up from the simulated world and bring him to the truth; the blue will allow him to keep dreaming his life away, forev…

After traditionally publishing three bestselling books, I’m often asked: How do I get published? My response is not often what inspiring writers want to hear. They want me to tell them exactly how …

Do you ever wish for the kind of writing process your friend has? You know, the one who sails into the mist? Or the one who writes every scene in the book down ahead of time—and then sticks to it? …

Tear-jerker music was created for people like me. Last night, while scrolling through social media, I paused at a video of a puppy staring mournfully at the camera while Sarah McLachlan’s “Angel” p…

They say publishing is a marathon, not a sprint? But what does that mean? When it comes to writing and publishing a book, everything feels like a sprint. Below are some of my tips for making…

Some of you saw the news this month about the buckled columns at the former Pfizer building in Manhattan, mid-conversion into apartments. Investigators later found the cause: reinforcement work cal…