Master Fiction Writing

The middle of a novel is often where writers begin to worry. The opening had energy, and the ending may be in sight, but somewhere in between, the story starts to feel slow, repetitive or strangely... directionless.
The usual advice is to raise the stakes, add conflict or introduce a twist. Those tools can help, but what if the real problem isn't that your protagonist needs more obstacles? What if they need a deeper understanding of what their goal is going to cost them?
In this episode, Stuart explores why a compelling middle does more than make a character’s original desire harder to achieve: it changes what achieving that desire would mean. Whether you’re writing romance, mystery, thriller, speculative fiction, historical fiction or family drama, you’ll learn how the middle can reveal the emotional, moral or personal question hiding beneath the visible plot.
You’ll also get a practical exercise to help diagnose a middle that isn’t working and uncover the more difficult question your story may be waiting to ask.

What actually makes a thriller a thriller? It isn’t just murder, spies, guns, plot twists, or car chases.
In this episode of Master Fiction Writing, we take a deep dive into the thriller genre as a pressure system: sustained threat, escalating stakes, urgent choices, controlled information, and the nervous anticipation that keeps readers turning pages.
We’ll explore how thrillers differ from mystery, suspense, horror, and crime fiction; how to create tension without constant action; why stakes need to be specific and personal; how twists differ from revelations; and how writers in any genre can use thriller principles to make their stories more compelling.

If you’ve enjoyed this episode and you’d like to support Master Fiction Writing, you can buy me a coffee over on Ko-fi. The link is https://ko-fi.com/masterfictionwriting

Does every protagonist really need to change by the end of a story? Not always.
In this episode, we look beyond the familiar “your character must change” advice and explore positive arcs, negative arcs, steadfast characters, ensemble stories, and intentional stasis.
You’ll learn how to ask the better craft question: not “does my protagonist change?” but “what moves?”

Do your characters keep feeling sad, furious, lonely, ashamed, or devastated on the page... but the reader still isn’t feeling much?
In this episode of Master Fiction Writing, we’re looking at the difference between explained emotion and experienced emotion. You’ll learn why naming a feeling isn’t always the same as creating it, and how to give the reader stronger emotional evidence through behaviour, body language, thought patterns, sensory detail, dialogue, silence, subtext, objects, and action under pressure.
We’ll also look at when it’s perfectly fine to name an emotion directly, why over-explaining is such a normal drafting habit, and how to revise emotional labels into moments the reader can actually feel.
The takeaway: your job isn’t to hide emotion from the reader. Your job is to make emotion happen inside the reader.
If you enjoy the podcast and would like to support future episodes, you can buy me a virtual coffee over on Ko-fi: ⁠https://ko-fi.com/masterfictionwriting⁠
No pressure at all, but it does help keep the podcast going, and lets me pretend I’m a terrifyingly organised media empire.

In this episode of Master Fiction Writing, we untangle one of the most confusing pieces of fiction craft: third-person point of view.
Because “write it in third person” sounds simple enough until you realise third person can mean several very different things.
We’ll look at five major forms of third-person narration:
Third-person objective, where the reader only sees what can be observed from the outside.
Third-person limited, where we stay inside one character’s perspective at a time.
Third-person deep or close limited, where the prose moves tightly into a character’s lived experience.
Third-person multiple limited, where several characters carry the story in separate scenes or chapters.
And third-person omniscient, where a larger narrative intelligence can move beyond any one character’s mind.
Using the same scene, we’ll explore how each form changes the reader’s experience of intimacy, tension, voice, distance, and information.
This is a practical, example-led episode for writers who want to understand not just what point of view is, but how to choose the right kind of third person for the story they’re trying to tell.

And if you enjoy the podcast and would like to support future episodes, you can buy me a virtual coffee over on Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/masterfictionwriting
No pressure at all, but it does help keep the podcast going, and lets me pretend I’m a terrifyingly organised media empire rather than one man talking earnestly about point of view into a microphone.