Fantasy structure is most often world-driven. The story has to work as a plot and also introduce, explain and describe an invented world, all without stalling the pace. Narrative structure can help to make sure the rules, stakes and consequences are evenly paced and hit at the right moments.

Every non-fiction book has a narrative, even when it has no plot. The narrative is the path the reader travels, from the problem you open with to the change you promise at the end.

Dark academia takes the gothic's dread and sets it inside libraries, lecture halls and candlelit common rooms. Its ingredients are old stone, dead languages and brilliant people doing terrible things in the name of learning. These ten themes give you the structure underneath the aesthetic.

If you're writing a Gothic novel, reading widely across the tradition is one of the best ways to understand how flexible the form can be.

Gothic novels often follow a set of themes. Read this article to deep-dive into the themes and find out which ones you might want to include in your gothic novel.

Learn the four elements that make a book great, with writing tips from a developmental editor — and find out what your manuscript might be missing.

Readers notice inconsistency even when they can't name it. A character's name spelled two ways, or a magic system term capitalised in chapter three, and lowercase in chapter twelve. One way to track and fix any inconsistencies is through a dedicated manuscript style sheet.

The difference between a rule broken well and a manuscript that just needed a firmer edit comes down to one thing: intent.

Breaking down eight reactions writers chase most often, the mechanics behind each one, and where to see the technique working in published books.

When a book leaves you crying, or staring at the wall trying to process what you just read, or laughing out loud on a train, none of that happened because the writer told you to feel it. It happened because the writer built a structure that made the reaction possible.

A name is often the first piece of world building a reader encounters, sometimes before a single line of description. It tells them whether they're in a windswept Norse-coded fjord or a lacquered East Asian-inspired court, whether the tone leans mythic or gritty, and whether they should expect the story to take itself seriously.

You’ve got 20,000 words sitting in a messy first draft. How do you take that and turn it into a book?

Over the years we have read a lot of books. Some of them we read in one sitting, with our bodies going into lockdown from being stuck in the same position for hours on end. It begs the question: what exactly is in the book that made us not move for twelve or more hours to finish the book?

Pacing is the speed at which a story moves — the rhythm of tension and release, action and reflection, acceleration and stillness that controls how a reader experiences time within a narrative. It is not simply about writing fast or slow scenes.

A trope is a recurring narrative device, character type, situation, or theme that appears frequently enough across a genre to be recognisable as a convention. Tropes are not clichés, though they can become clichés when used without thought or craft.