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Crafting Fabulous Fiction: Column Archives
by Victoria Grossack

Characterization
We All Need Someone To Love: Creating Characters Readers Will Care About
A Study in Sidekicks
Extending Your Character Range: Sex, Age and Other
What Do Your Characters Want? (Part One)
What Do Your Characters Want? (Part Two): How to Use Characters' Goals to Move the Plot
Mentors in Your Masterpiece
My Point of View on Point of View, Part I
My Point of View on Point of View, Part II
Character Tags and Tics
What's In a Name?
Flesh out Your Writing with Body Language

Conflict & Suspense
Raising the Stakes
What Do Your Characters Want? (Part Two): How to Use Characters' Goals to Move the Plot
Satisfaction Through Frustration
Everybody Lies
Hanging on Cliffs
Conflict
Confrontations

Description & Setting
Developing Deftness in Description
Map Your Settings
Flesh out Your Writing with Body Language
Setting the Mood

Dialogue
What Are They Thinking? Portraying Your Characters' Thoughts
Interjections and Profanity
Who Speaks? Pointers about Attribution in Dialogue
What Should They Talk About?

Details That Make the Difference
Prayers, Promises and Prophecies
Scenes Grown in the Valley of Despair
Tell, Don't Show
Arcs of Artifacts
Titles for Your Texts
Do You Hear Voices? Refining Your Authorial Style
The Moral of Your Story

Plotting & Story Structure
Stories Within Stories
Why Doesn't the Dog Bark? Plot Points vs. Plot Holes
The Order of Things
Chatting about Chapters
A Story, B Story, Part One: Why Use Subplots?
A Story, B Story, Part Two: Challenges of Working with Multiple Plots
The End
Levels of Structure in Fiction
Twisting the Plot
Plunging Into Your Project
Exposing Exposition
Expressing Exposition

Issues of Grammar & Style
Tense Matters: Verbs in the Past, Present, and Future
Parsing Paragraphs
Grammatical Griping
Grammatical Groping
Sensible, Sensitive Sentences
Connect with Conjunctions
Pondering Personal Pronouns
Counting the Words
Editing for Consistency
Mixing and Matching Metaphors

Keeping Your Readers Happy...
Facts in Fiction
E-Readers and the Changing Nature of the Story Experience
The Satisfied Reader Experience
The Reader's Emotional Journey
The Author-Reader Contract

The Novel and Beyond
The Writer's Marathon: Seven Challenges to a Successful Series
Fine-Tuning Your Author's Note
Having Fun with Fan Fiction
Some Absurdities in Fiction
The Greater Logic of Fiction
Writing in Pairs

Writer's Block, Procrastination, and Other Issues of the Writing Life
Nine Anti-Muses and How to Placate Them
How to Get - and Take - Criticism
Writing under the Influence: Inspiration, Plagiarism and Homage
Why Don't You Reach the End?


Victoria Grossack studied Creative Writing and English Literature at Dartmouth College, and has published stories and articles in such publications as Contingencies, Women's World and I Love Cats. She is the author of Crafting Fabulous Fiction, a step-by-step guide to developing and polishing novels and short stories that includes many of her beloved columns. With Alice Underwood, she co-authored the Tapestry of Bronze series (including Jocasta, Mother-Wife of Oedipus; The Children of Tantalus; and Antigone & Creon), based on Greek myths and set in the late Bronze Age. Her independent novels include The Meryton Murders, in which she channels the spirits and styles of Jane Austen and Agatha Christie, and Hunters of the Feather, the first in the Crow Nickels (chronicles) trilogy, a set of novels that gives a bird's-eye view of the world. Victoria is married with kids, and (though American) spends much of her time in Europe. Her hobbies include gardening, hiking, bird-watching and tutoring mathematics. Visit her online at https://www.facebook.com/victoria.grossack/.
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