Writers' craft

How to write dialogue is one of the first things a budding storyteller can master with just a bit of practice and effort. That's not to say that writing dialogue is easy- it's not. But, once you realize the purpose of dialogue in a story and hone in on all those pesky formatting rules, it can become intuitive.  Read more

One of my greatest thrills as a college student was when I was let into the intermediate-level creative writing workshop. You couldn't just sign up and walk in-you had to submit a short story good enough for the professor to deem you worthy. That first day, I sat around the rectangular table with my future colleagues and was handed a set of rules for the class.  Read more

James Patterson introduces a mystifying new character into his Maximum Ride universe in Hawk, a YA novel he wrote with Gabrielle Charbonnet, out this month from Little, Brown's Jimmy Patterson imprint. The original nine-book Maximum Ride series, published between 2005 and 2015, has sold more than 13 million copies.

World-building is an essential part of all fiction writing. Sure, with fantasy genres, writers have to create a whole new world (don't you dare close your eyes). But, If you're reading a novel set in New York, then you'd expect the author to tell how New York looks, sounds, and smells. You'd want to know absolutely everything about the people who live there, too.  Read more

First Draft: A Dialogue of Writing is a weekly show featuring in-depth interviews with fiction, nonfiction, essay writers, and poets, highlighting the voices of writers as they discuss their work, their craft, and the literary arts.  Read more