Master Fiction Writing

You've spent chapters building towards a huge moment in your novel. A betrayal, a death, a shocking revelation, or perhaps a long-awaited victory. It happens, it's dramatic, and you're rather pleased with yourself... but what happens afterwards? In this episode of Master Fiction Writing , I'm exploring the aftermath scene. Those moments when characters have to live with, make sense...

Ever found yourself shouting at a fictional character because they're about to do something spectacularly stupid? We've all been there. But why do some terrible decisions make characters more compelling, while others leave us wondering what on earth the writer was thinking? Struggling with a story problem of your own? My Story SOS service offers a focused, one-to-one coaching session where...

Unreliable Narrators: How to Mislead Readers Without Cheating Them Can your readers trust the person telling them the story? And if they can't, how do you make that part of the storytelling rather than a cheap trick? In this episode of Master Fiction Writing , I'm exploring the wonderful, complicated world of unreliable narrators. Inspired by a listener's question about a locked-cabin...

How do you keep a story moving when there’s no ticking clock, no looming deadline, and the plot unfolds across decades? This week’s episode comes from a question sent in by Joan over on Ko-fi, who’s writing an epic family saga and wanted to know how to create pressure and momentum across a long timeframe. I look at why momentum isn’t the same as speed, and how expansive stories can build narrative...

A great secret can give you material. The reveal is what turns that material into story. In this episode of Master Fiction Writing, I’m looking at how to control what your reader knows, when they know it, and how the timing of information can completely change the tension in a scene or an entire novel. We’ll explore the difference between mystery, suspense and surprise, why some reveals land while...

What makes dialogue feel alive? Very often, it’s what the characters aren’t saying. In this episode of Master Fiction Writing, I’m looking at subtext: the gap between what a character wants from a conversation and what they’re actually prepared to say out loud. We’ll explore how subtext can create tension, intimacy, humour, conflict and emotional depth, and why it works best when characters have a...

Who really has the power in your scene? Status is one of the hidden forces that can make a scene feel alive. It shapes who controls the conversation, who needs something more, who can walk away, and how the balance between characters changes from moment to moment. In this episode of Master Fiction Writing, I explore how status works in dialogue, relationships, romance, comedy, conflict and quiet s...

What makes some characters instantly compelling to one another? Sometimes it isn’t vulnerability, physical attraction, or even conflict. Sometimes it’s the moment one character looks at another and thinks: Oh. You’re good. In this episode of Master Fiction Writing , I explore the Hawksian woman , the confident, capable, quick-witted female character associated with the films of director Howard Haw...

A magic system. A monster. A machine. A prophecy. A portal. A ghost. A dystopian regime. An impossible world. Speculative fiction often begins with a brilliant what if? But the idea becomes a story when that impossible thing collides with something deeply human. This episode of Master Fiction Writing is an audio version of my presentation for the WorldShift summit for speculative fiction writers....

Romantasy is everywhere right now. Dragons, fae courts, morally grey love interests, spectacular special editions - and sales figures that have made the publishing industry sit up very straight indeed. But what’s actually driving its extraordinary appeal? In this episode of Master Fiction Writing , I take a deep dive into the rise of romantasy: what the term means, where the genre came from, why a...

Sometimes the best edit you can make to an emotional scene is to delete the sentence that explains why it was emotional. In this episode of Master Fiction Writing , I’m looking at a habit I see surprisingly often in manuscripts: a writer creates a strong emotional beat through behaviour, dialogue, silence or physical detail... and then immediately explains what the character is feeling. The troubl...

What does this story want because this character is queer? That’s the question at the heart of this special episode recorded for ProWritingAid’s Write with Pride event. Too often, queer characters are present in a story without their queerness meaningfully shaping what they want, what they fear, what they risk or who they become. Representation matters, but great fiction goes one step further by a...

What if the impossible is the best way to tell the truth? Speculative fiction isn’t really about dragons, spaceships, magic or dystopias. At its heart, it’s about asking one deceptively simple question: What if…? In this episode of Master Fiction Writing , Stuart Wakefield explores why writers have always imagined impossible worlds—and why the best speculative fiction reveals emotional truths that...

In the last episode, we explored why so many argument scenes feel artificial and discovered that arguments aren’t really conversations - they’re attempts to change another human being. Now it’s time to get practical. In this second part of our deep dive into writing conflict, we’ll explore the techniques professional writers use to create arguments that feel unpredictable, emotionally truthful and...

Why do so many argument scenes feel strangely lifeless, even when characters are shouting, interrupting each other, and making excellent points? Because conflict isn’t about disagreement. It’s about change. In this episode of Master Fiction Writing , I'll explore why professional argument scenes feel so compelling, why amateur ones often become disguised exposition, and what readers are really...

Quiet scenes are often where manuscripts go flat, not because nothing explodes, but because nothing changes. In this episode of Master Fiction Writing , Stuart Wakefield explores why low-action scenes still need movement, pressure, and consequence. Whether your characters are drinking tea, walking home, recovering from bad news, lying awake, remembering the past, or having a careful conversation,...

A phone call scene can look deceptively small on the page. Two people talk, some information changes hands, then someone hangs up, but if that’s all the scene is doing, it may be falling flat. In this episode of Master Fiction Writing, Stuart Wakefield takes a deep dive into one of fiction’s most overlooked craft moments: the phone call scene. Why do so many phone calls in novels, short stories, a...

A character walking into a room might seem like simple scene logistics, but an entrance can reveal far more than movement. It can show power, fear, desire, belonging, exclusion, secrecy, status, and change before anyone says a word. In this episode of Master Fiction Writing , Stuart Wakefield explores the doorway scene: those small but potent moments when a character crosses from one emotional ter...

The middle of a novel is often where writers begin to worry. The opening had energy, and the ending may be in sight, but somewhere in between, the story starts to feel slow, repetitive or strangely... directionless. The usual advice is to raise the stakes, add conflict or introduce a twist. Those tools can help, but what if the real problem isn't that your protagonist needs more obstacles? Wha...

What actually makes a thriller a thriller? It isn’t just murder, spies, guns, plot twists, or car chases. In this episode of Master Fiction Writing, we take a deep dive into the thriller genre as a pressure system: sustained threat, escalating stakes, urgent choices, controlled information, and the nervous anticipation that keeps readers turning pages. We’ll explore how thrillers differ from myste...

Does every protagonist really need to change by the end of a story? Not always. In this episode, we look beyond the familiar “your character must change” advice and explore positive arcs, negative arcs, steadfast characters, ensemble stories, and intentional stasis. You’ll learn how to ask the better craft question: not “does my protagonist change?” but “what moves?”

Do your characters keep feeling sad, furious, lonely, ashamed, or devastated on the page... but the reader still isn’t feeling much? In this episode of Master Fiction Writing , we’re looking at the difference between explained emotion and experienced emotion. You’ll learn why naming a feeling isn’t always the same as creating it, and how to give the reader stronger emotional evidence through behav...

In this episode of Master Fiction Writing , we untangle one of the most confusing pieces of fiction craft: third-person point of view. Because “write it in third person” sounds simple enough until you realise third person can mean several very different things. We’ll look at five major forms of third-person narration: Third-person objective, where the reader only sees what can be observed from the...

In this episode of Master Fiction Writing , we explore one of the most quietly intimidating parts of writing fiction: creating characters when you’re afraid of getting them wrong. Inspired by a listener question, this episode looks at the difference between research as preparation and research as protection. Research, plotting, and worldbuilding are essential tools, especially when your story is i...

Should you cut words like saw , felt , heard , realised , and remembered from your fiction? Often, yes. Always? Not even slightly. In this episode of Master Fiction Writing , Stuart breaks down why so-called filter words and mental-processing verbs get flagged so often, how they can weaken immediacy and increase psychic distance, and why the advice to remove them can become unhelpfully rigid when...