Skeptophilia

It's hard to describe why some particular lines of dialogue are memorable, any more than you could say "wow, those three notes in t...

I've written a number of scenes that have affected me emotionally while I was writing them.  Honestly, that's always what I'm tr...

An author friend of mine recently posted a dilemma; she had come up with a killer title for her work-in-progress only to find out that anoth...

There's a claim out there that if a work of fiction doesn't grab the reader on the first page, it never will. The whole "slow ...

A writer friend of mine on social media asked what I thought was a very interesting question, and one that would be a good topic for this we...

For today's Fiction Friday, let's consider: Bad Guys. One of the problems I find with a lot of writing is that the antagonists are c...

I was asked an interesting question yesterday, that I thought would make a great topic for this week's Fiction Friday: does a good story...

I am fundamentally an optimistic person. I know that might be surprising, given that I frequently write here at Skeptophilia  about the abso...

If you needed any further evidence that novelists really are a breed apart, consider the study that was carried out by some researchers at D...

I've been a storyteller since I can remember.  Nicer than calling it "compulsive liar," which I suppose is what it is, not tha...