Blog
Updates and behind-the-scenes notes from Charlie Forêt.
Filter by tag : indie author fiction
Chapter Endings as Contracts
A chapter ending is a contract. Most writers sign it without reading. Every working writer has had this talk with a beta reader. The pacing felt off in the middle, they say. You ask which chapter. They can't point to one. So you go back and revise the chapters in that range. You …
Writing YA Fiction
Imagine your whole school can see your stats A sixteen-year-old, one humiliating half second, and the reckless thing he does to prove it wasn’t the whole story. You already know where you rank. Somebody decided years ago, the label stuck, and most days it feels settled. The athle…
OODA Loops by Example
Last time, I argued that revision is an OODA loop, and that the step most writers skip is Orient — the move where you frame what you’ve read against what the passage is actually for, before you change a single word. That’s easy to assert and harder to show. So this dispatch is on…
OODA Loops for Editing
When you’re stuck in rewrite hell — version after version, none of them actually better — the problem usually isn’t your writing skill. It’s something quieter that most writers never name. Most revisions fight themselves. Here’s why. Every working writer has felt the difference b…
In Defense of the Adverb
The adverb prohibition was never a rule. It was a Strunk & White nervous tic that became orthodoxy — and our prose got worse for it. The prohibition isn’t entirely wrong. There’s a real craft problem buried inside it, and the rule was an attempt to solve it. But somewhere between…
Oxford Comma vs. No Oxford Comma: What Writers Should Know
Which is the best for comma usage in fiction? To be, or not to be? As I’ve been revising and editing Another Past: Book One, I’ve run into an inconsistency in my editing tools. In the review tools built into Ulysses, where my definitive content lives, Oxford commas are used. Thi…
Another Past: Book One
Meet Paul Taylor, a gifted teen with an extraordinary secret: he’s actually a brilliant physicist from the future, caught in a thrilling time-travel adventure! After being attacked and hurled back through time, Paul finds himself living his adolescent life once more. But this tim…