by Ayesha Ali | Oct 23, 2025 | revision, Writing Craft
Last year I was asked to offer some revision advice for the Fiction Writing Made Easy podcast (listen to the episode here). As I thought about it, I realized the key to my revision process is the climactic scene. To be quite honest with you, the first...
by Ayesha Ali | Aug 27, 2025 | Character, Writing Craft
As a new writer, I read a lot of articles about how to create characters yet none of them proved helpful to me. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get through the numerous questions on character sheets or figure out what my character had on their bedside...
by Ayesha Ali | Jul 29, 2025 | Dialogue, Writing Craft
Sometimes, you can learn more about writing techniques when learning other subjects. I learned a lot more about dialogue taking a theatre class than I ever did in a writing workshop or craft book. When I went back to university in my mid-twenties, I decided to...
by Ayesha Ali | May 20, 2025 | Worldbuilding, Writing Craft
Setting is an important part of storytelling. The environment a story takes place in changes how it’s told, what the characters are able to do, and a whole host of other small decision a writer makes. For example, a story set at a fantasy academy will have very...
by Ayesha Ali | Feb 18, 2025 | Character, Writing Craft
Hey friends. We have come to the last part of the series on writing immigrant characters. In part 1, we explored research as a decision-making tool and honed in on some vital details about our immigrant characters. In part 2, we explored the “heavier”...
by Ayesha Ali | Jan 21, 2025 | Character, Writing Craft
In last month’s post, we began our exploration of writing immigrant characters. We talked about how research can be used as a decision-making tool, and some of the choices to make for your characters. Today, we’re going to get into some of the heavier, yet...