Craft

A corpse. A locked room. No way in or out. The locked room mystery is the purest distillation of detective fiction-an impossible crime that demands a logical solution. It’s also a covenant between author and reader more sacred than any other genre. This is fair-play detective fiction, where the writer makes an implicit promise: You have all the clues you need. The solution is possible. I am not cheating. Break that promise, and your reader will never forgive you. ...

The building is already on fire when your story starts. No explanation of who lit it. No backstory about the building’s construction. No context about why it matters. Just flames, smoke, and someone running toward the exit. This is in medias res-literally “in the middle of things”-and it’s one of the most powerful tools in storytelling. Why Starting in the Middle Works Traditional story structure suggests you introduce characters, establish setting, explain stakes, then deliver conflict. ...

The moment the protagonist thinks they’ve won-disaster strikes. The moment all hope seems lost-a path forward appears. This is the rhythm of false victories and false defeats: emotional reversals that keep readers off-balance and invested. When done right, they create the feeling that anything can happen. When done wrong, they feel like manipulation or cheap tricks. The difference is in the execution. Defining the Terms False Victory (The Rug Pull) The protagonist achieves their goal or thinks they’ve solved the problem. ...

The defining characteristic of a thriller isn’t violence or danger-it’s urgency. Every thriller, from spy novels to legal thrillers to psychological suspense, has a clock ticking somewhere. Sometimes it’s literal (defuse the bomb in 24 hours), sometimes metaphorical (solve this before more people die), but it’s always present. Time pressure is the engine of thriller pacing. Remove it, and you have a mystery, an adventure, or a drama. Add it, and suddenly every scene vibrates with tension. ...

The most powerful line in Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” is never spoken. Two people sit at a train station, discussing “it.” They never say what “it” is. But readers know: they’re talking about abortion. The entire story happens in what’s not said. That’s the power of silence in storytelling-the strategic omission that makes readers fill in gaps, lean forward, and participate in meaning-making. What Is Narrative Silence? Silence in storytelling isn’t the absence of words. It’s the deliberate withholding of information, explanation, or resolution. ...

You’ve felt it before: reading a book where nothing major happens on the page, yet you can’t stop turning pages. No explosions. No shocking revelations. Just a character walking across a room, thinking. And somehow it’s riveting. That’s micro-tension-the sentence-level creation of unease, anticipation, or curiosity that makes prose compulsive even when the macro-level stakes are quiet. It’s the difference between: “She walked to the door and opened it.” And: ...

“Call me Ishmael.” Three words. No context. No explanation. Yet you’re already wondering who Ishmael is, why he needs to be called that, and what kind of person opens a conversation this way. That’s the power of a great first sentence-it doesn’t just start a story, it creates an immediate contract between writer and reader. This sentence promises something. It asks a question without words. It makes you lean in. ...

Stories don’t move at constant speed. Sometimes you slow down to show a conversation in real-time, word-by-word. Sometimes you compress a month into a sentence. This is the art of scene versus summary-choosing when to zoom in with vivid detail and when to zoom out for narrative compression. Master this, and you control pacing like a dial you can turn at will. Defining the Terms Scene: The Close-Up A scene unfolds in real-time (or close to it). You show: ...

The Millennium Falcon is a piece of junk. The cockpit chairs are mismatched. Panels are held together with what looks like duct tape. Wiring is exposed. The hyperdrive fails constantly. Everything looks jury-rigged, patched, and held together through sheer stubbornness. And that’s exactly why we believe in it. The Falcon feels lived-in. It has a history we never see but constantly sense. It’s been flown hard, repaired poorly, modified desperately, and loved despite all its flaws. ...

Every story makes a promise in its opening pages. Not explicitly. Not with words like “this will be…” But through tone, genre signals, pacing, and the questions it raises, your opening creates expectations about the kind of story this will be. Break that promise, and readers feel betrayed-even if the writing is brilliant. Keep it, and readers trust you enough to follow anywhere. The Unspoken Contract When a reader picks up your story, they’re asking: ...