Things to Avoid in your Writing #6: White Washing
This post is a bit of a spin-off of my Stereotypical Characters, as well as Foreign Languages posts. While I wrote the former to illustrate the dangers of lazy character […]
Tag Archives: story
Things to Avoid in your Writing #５: Stagnation
Stagnation. It’s a terrible thing. We’ve all seen it before. The perfect example is standing water. What happens to it again? It gets filthy, the lack of movement leads to […]
4 Keys to Crafting an Excellent Plot Twist pt. 2
Before I begin I just want to say that this is only the second part of the post series in case you didn’t notice from the title. Part 1 is […]
4 Keys to Crafting an Excellent Plot Twist pt. 1
Before I begin I just want to say that this post ran long so I divided it up into two parts. Part 2 will be up in a week’s time. […]
Things to Avoid in your Writing #3: Stereotypical Characters
Stereotypical characters. They’re everywhere, and honestly, it’s a bad look for any medium of fiction. We’ve all seen them, and they take many forms. Here’s a quick example: Do not, […]
Suspension of Disbelief
Over and over again, I find myself referring to something called Suspension of Disbelief. While I do feel I have explained it well enough to be understood in the other […]
Things to Avoid in your Writing #2: Mary Sue and, her brother, Gary Stu
Even if you don’t realize it, we’ve all met the siblings Mary Sue and Gary Stu. See, the reason we don’t realize we’ve met them is because they’re utterly forgettable. […]
Things to Avoid in your Writing #1: Deus Ex Machina
Okay, so who here knows what Deus ex Machina means? Literally from Latin it means “God in the Machine”. In the literary sense it means something much worse. Deus ex […]
Hero Archetype #2: The Anti-hero
Okay so who knows what an Antihero is? I know what you’re thinking, but no, it’s not a villain. Much like the Byronic Hero, I always found the Antihero to […]
Serendipitous Inspiration #3: Winter Weather
As most of you probably don’t know, Buffalo, New York has had a pretty amazing winter so far. In fact, we didn’t have any significant snowfall until only a few […]
Vincent Alcaras -- Author 