Write, publish, and market your book.

Where to find legitimate short story competitions, the red flags that mark a predatory one, how to read the rights clause before you enter, and a submission routine that keeps you sane across a year of entries.

Screenplay format looks fussy, but every rule exists for a production reason. Here are the elements, the page specs readers expect, and an annotated example you can copy.

A story arc is the line of change a story travels, and it is not the same thing as plot structure. Here's the difference, the five arcs every story runs on, how to braid the plot arc and character arc together, and how to diagnose an arc that has gone flat.

A trope isn't a cliché — it's a pattern readers already understand, which makes it free setup you can spend. Here are 24 common character tropes, what each one promises the reader, and four reliable ways to subvert them without breaking the story.

A memoir isn't your whole life — it's one thread of it, told well. Here's what the best-known memoirs have in common, how six-word memoirs work, and how to find the thread in your own story.

A short story isn't a small novel — it works on different rules. Here's how to build one that lands: one character, one want, a late start, and an ending that pays for everything before it.