​Between writing camps, plot has long been a contested concept — sometimes treated less as a craft tool and more as a philosophical fault line. On one side are writers who believe stories should emerge organically from character, voice, and situation rather than be engineered through predefined structures. Stephen King famously champions this view, arguing that “story” arises naturally when characters are placed in meaningful conflict, and that heavy-handed plotting risks flattening authenticity into formula. For many writers — especially those drawn to literary, character-driven work — plot can feel artificial, even manipulative, as if it imposes order where intuition and discovery should lead. And yet, most finished novels that resonate deeply with readers still rely on an underlying architecture of change, consequence, and momentum — whether the author consciously planned it or not. 

Every holiday season reminds me that family gatherings exist for two reasons: food, and unintentionally gifting writers enough story material to last until next December (ha). But seriously, if you’re a writer attending a holiday gathering and you aren’t mentally filing material away for your next book, are you even doing the holidays right?  

​The holiday season has a way of heightening everything—joy, nostalgia, tension, longing, unresolved conflict, even the quiet griefs that typically stay tucked beneath the routines of daily life. Whether you’re writing fiction or memoir, December’s sparkle-and-shadow combination offers an irresistible creative entry point into family drama. People are gathering. Traditions return. Old wounds test their bandages. And amid the glow of twinkle lights, characters (including ourselves) often reveal who they are with startling clarity.

Few topics spark more spirited debate among fiction writers than the question of plotting versus "pantsing" — planning a story in advance versus discovering it as you write. Plotters often value structure, foresight, and narrative cohesion, while pantsers prize intuition, spontaneity, and the feeling of uncovering a story from the inside out. Both approaches are grounded in legitimate creative instincts, and both have produced powerful, lasting novels. The friction arises not because one method is inherently superior, but because writers often mistake a process preference for a craft philosophy — treating the way a story is written as evidence of how it ought to work on the page.

Magical realism has long held a shimmering corner of the literary world — a place where wonder slips quietly into the everyday, and where the impossible is treated not as spectacle but as truth. Writers who step into this space discover a genre that invites subtlety, metaphor, cultural resonance, and emotional depth. It’s a space where magic isn’t a disruption but a companion; where characters don’t gasp when miracles occur, because the world has always held more beneath its surface than logic can explain.

Supernatural fiction has always lived at the crossroads of what we know and what we feel. It’s the place where everyday life brushes against the impossible—where ghosts linger at the edges of our grief, where witches navigate both spellcraft and the PTA, where a mysterious stranger at the bar may literally be older than civilization.

It’s a genre packed with possibility, and it shares deep creative DNA with magical realism: both bend the rules of the natural world to illuminate something true about the human experience. Yet supernatural fiction brings a deliciously heightened sense of stakes, power, danger, and transformation—which is why so many readers flock to it when they want drama with emotional punch.

Like many 80s and 90s kids with a flashlight and an overactive imagination, I was obsessed with Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. Those eerie black-and-white illustrations by Stephen Gammell were nightmare fuel in the best way—and Alvin Schwartz’s simple, rhythmic prose made every story feel like something whispered at a slumber party you shouldn’t have attended. What struck me then, even before I understood it, was how those stories worked on both the mind and the body: the suspenseful pauses, the perfect pacing, the way dread coiled tighter with every page until you were both terrified and thrilled. That book taught me early on that fear, when crafted well, isn’t just about what happens—it’s about how it feels. It made me fall in love with horror as an art form, long before I ever thought about writing or editing it myself.

Back in grad school—many moons ago (ha), one of my creative writing professors regularly shared his unpublished work with our class. When a student once asked if he worried about someone stealing his writing, he laughed and said, “Steal it, please. And if you can get anyone to pay for it, tell me how you did it.”

At the time, I didn’t fully understand what he meant. Years later, after my own work was published, I realized the truth behind his words: writing a book is only half the climb. Getting readers to actually buy it is like scaling Everest after you’ve already conquered K2. And if you want to build a loyal readership, you need your own authentic voice—something no one can fake or sustain if it’s stolen.

You’ve polished your draft, finished a self-edit, and now you’re ready for fresh eyes. Enter beta readers: trusted readers who can preview the story with fresh eyes and give feedback for improvement before it goes to editors or agents or is released to the public. Beta readers can help you catch plot holes, confusing character choices, flat dialogue, or pacing issues. But how you find beta readers, guide them, and process their feedback makes all the difference.

Here’s how to make the most of your beta reader experience:

It's been a long time coming, but the proverbial blood and the literal sweat and tears paid off, and you finally got to type: The End. Congratulations! Now comes the part most writers dread: editing. Self-editing can feel overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to. Think of it as sculpting: you’ve carved the shape of a lion out of a raw block of marble, and now you’re detailing the eyes, mouth, mane, etc. (i.e., the unique characteristics of this sculpture that will set it apart from all the rest).
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Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you shape your draft into something you can confidently share with beta readers, professional editors, agents, and publishers.

Admittedly, I’ve grappled with this one. The value of a book should never be determined by a single judge or a small panel of judges. Authors have no idea what life experiences have influenced the opinions of the judge(s), or how many manuscripts the judge(s) had to read in a pressured timeframe.

Did they read your submission on a day that everything else was going wrong in their life, so nothing they read that day landed quite right in their psyche? Did your protagonist have the same name as their awful ex? Do YOU have the same name as their ex—or the kid who bullied them in grade school? There are just too many subtleties influencing the spectrum of emotions in the human mind to define one’s worth as an author by a single contest.