Your story is only as deep and beautiful as your characters, so if your characters are dull, lifeless mannequins, then your story will suffer. They are the heart of your story and must be realistic, human. A part of the human experience is having conflicts with other people. If everyone is getting along spectacularly, not only do things get boring, but your characters start to seem like paper cut outs. It would be great if life were really like this, with little to no conflic

“Words are pale shadows of forgotten names. As names have power, words have power. Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts.” ― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind Wise words from an amazing book. (I’m also currently reading this, so I wanted to squeeze in a quote somewhere!) Words do have a great deal of power, if used correctly. As writers, we have the ability, no, the responsibility, to use words to create a wonderful expe

There can be a lot of fear surrounding this question, but being a mother of two adorable monsters myself, I can assure you it is possible to be a parent and a writer. There is hope! Don't fret. I remember the anxiety I felt before having my first child, most of it due to the fact that I was about to bring a child into the world and somehow keep the thing alive having had no experience of any kind, but a lot of it was due to fear of not being able to write. I shrunk at the pos

Symbols have been used in literature for…a really long time (I know, I’m great with words). You can probably think of a few prominent symbols in some popular books, like the two-fingered salute or the Mockinjay pin in The Hunger Games, or the scarlet letter in, (you guessed it!) The Scarlet Letter. A symbol is usually a physical object that represents an idea. According to reference.com, Symbols are important because they facilitate communication and identification of ideas a