Master Fiction Writing

A magic system. A monster. A machine. A prophecy. A portal. A ghost. A dystopian regime. An impossible world.
Speculative fiction often begins with a brilliant what if? But the idea becomes a story when that impossible thing collides with something deeply human.
This episode of Master Fiction Writing is an audio version of my presentation for the WorldShift summit for speculative fiction writers. In it, I explore how to move beyond the “cool premise” and discover the emotional pressure hiding inside your speculative idea.
We’ll look at The Human Cost Framework and six elements you can use to connect premise and character: The Impossible Thing, The Human Desire, The Pressure Point, The Cost, The Choice, and The Change.
Along the way, you’ll learn how to:
identify why this protagonist belongs in this speculative story;
find the vulnerable place where your premise and character collide;
give magic, monsters and technology emotional consequences, not simply rules;
turn enormous external stakes into intimate personal ones;
create choices in which every available option costs something;
and use the speculative element itself to drive character transformation.

Whether you write fantasy, science fiction, horror, dystopian fiction, paranormal fiction, magical realism or something that cheerfully refuses to sit in any one genre box, this episode will help you ask a deceptively simple question:
Don’t ask only what the impossible thing does. Ask what it costs.
FREE DOWNLOAD: The Human Cost Map
Use the framework from this episode with your own story.
Find out more about my book coaching:
https://www.thebookcoach.co
If you enjoy Master Fiction Writing, please follow or subscribe, leave a review, and share the episode with another writer who has a brilliant impossible idea and needs to discover the human story inside it.

Romantasy is everywhere right now. Dragons, fae courts, morally grey love interests, spectacular special editions - and sales figures that have made the publishing industry sit up very straight indeed.
But what’s actually driving its extraordinary appeal?
In this episode of Master Fiction Writing, I take a deep dive into the rise of romantasy: what the term means, where the genre came from, why authors such as Sarah J. Maas and Rebecca Yarros have become publishing phenomena, and why BookTok alone can’t explain what’s happening.
More importantly, we look beneath the trend at the storytelling machinery.
Strong romantasy often runs on two interconnected engines: an external fantasy story involving danger, power, conflict or survival, and an intimate relationship story involving desire, trust, vulnerability and belonging. When those engines genuinely affect one another, the result can produce extraordinary narrative momentum.
And that principle has plenty to teach you even if the chances of a dragon appearing in your current manuscript are approximately zero.
Along the way, I explore yearning and delayed gratification, romance tropes, reader promises, emotional causality, world-building with consequences, series storytelling, “spice”, the dangers of decorative fantasy and bolted-on romance, and why bigger stakes aren’t necessarily better stakes.
You can also try a few simple exercises while you listen:
• Name the two engines in your own story: what is your protagonist trying to achieve externally, and what do they want emotionally from another person?
• Look for interaction: find a moment when something happening in the plot changes an important relationship - or when that relationship causes your protagonist to make a different plot decision.
• Identify the anticipation: ask yourself what your reader is currently waiting, hoping or dreading will happen, and whether your story is actively building towards that payoff.
There’s also a free companion workbook, The Two-Engine Test: A Story Development Workbook, which takes these ideas much further and helps you apply them directly to your own novel.
Download the workbook HERE.
If you enjoy the episode, please like, follow or subscribe to Master Fiction Writing wherever you listen. And if you know another writer who insists romantasy has absolutely nothing to teach them because their novel contains neither wings nor suspiciously attractive princes, send it their way. They may be surprised.

Sometimes the best edit you can make to an emotional scene is to delete the sentence that explains why it was emotional.
In this episode of Master Fiction Writing, I’m looking at a habit I see surprisingly often in manuscripts: a writer creates a strong emotional beat through behaviour, dialogue, silence or physical detail... and then immediately explains what the character is feeling.
The trouble is, that explanation can rob the original moment of its power.
We’ll explore why writers often don’t trust what they’ve already put on the page, how emotional over-explanation stops the reader from participating in the story, and why your characters don’t always need to understand their own feelings with the precision of a trained therapist. We’ll also look at why “show, don’t tell” isn’t really the rule you need. The more useful question is: are you telling the reader something you’ve already successfully shown them?
Choose an emotional scene from your manuscript and look for places where you’ve written:
behaviour → explanation
dialogue → explanation
physical sensation → explanation
image → explanation
Temporarily delete the explanation and read the passage again.
Does the reader still understand enough?
Not everything. Enough.
You may discover that the behaviour, dialogue or image was already doing all the work - and that the explanatory sentence was simply getting in its way.
If this episode helps you with your writing, please like the episode and subscribe to Master Fiction Writing so you don’t miss future episodes.
And if you’d like some expert help figuring out what’s working in your story, what isn’t, and what to tackle next, you can find out more about working with me as your book coach at:
⁠The Book Coach — Less Stress. More Story.

What does this story want because this character is queer?
That’s the question at the heart of this special episode recorded for ProWritingAid’s Write with Pride event.
Too often, queer characters are present in a story without their queerness meaningfully shaping what they want, what they fear, what they risk or who they become. Representation matters, but great fiction goes one step further by allowing identity to influence the emotional and structural movement of the story.
In this webinar, I introduce The Queer Story Engine: a practical five-part framework built around Desire, Danger, Belonging, Visibility and Change. Together, these elements help writers create queer characters whose identities are woven into the fabric of the narrative rather than simply named on the page.
Whether you’re writing fantasy, historical fiction, horror, romance, literary fiction or something entirely your own, this episode will give you practical revision questions you can apply immediately.
In this episode you’ll discover:
• Why representation and story integration are not the same thing.• How queerness can become a genuine source of plot, stakes and emotional movement.• Why queer joy can be every bit as powerful a story engine as conflict or danger.• How the same framework works across different genres and worlds.• A simple revision exercise you can return to throughout your writing process.

Download the free companion workbook:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NThkobC18oyEnceGBb2q8AI2SFCFefu8/view?usp=sharing
Find out more about my coaching:
https://www.thebookcoach.co
If this episode helps you see your story or your characters in a new way, I’d be delighted if you’d subscribe, leave a review, or share it with another writer.
Happy writing.

What if the impossible is the best way to tell the truth?
Speculative fiction isn’t really about dragons, spaceships, magic or dystopias.
At its heart, it’s about asking one deceptively simple question:
What if…?
In this episode of Master Fiction Writing, Stuart Wakefield explores why writers have always imagined impossible worlds—and why the best speculative fiction reveals emotional truths that realism sometimes cannot.
Rather than taking a tour through the different subgenres, this episode looks at speculative fiction through the lens of story craft. You’ll discover why memorable speculative novels begin with human questions rather than clever ideas, how worldbuilding should grow naturally from theme, and why character, consequence and moral pressure matter far more than lore.
Using examples from classics and contemporary works including Frankenstein, The Left Hand of Darkness, Never Let Me Go, The Lord of the Rings, Arrival, The Road and many others, Stuart explores what separates speculative fiction that merely entertains from speculative fiction that stays with readers long after the final page.
Whether you’re writing fantasy, science fiction, horror, alternate history, magical realism or something that refuses to fit neatly into a genre, this episode will help you create stories that are emotionally truthful, structurally compelling and impossible to forget.
Why the real power of speculative fiction lies in the Worldshift—the one impossible change that reshapes everything else.
How to develop stronger “What if?” premises.
Why worldbuilding should be a consequence of theme, not the starting point.
How to build speculative worlds that naturally generate conflict.
Why readers remember characters and consequences, not encyclopaedic lore.
Common mistakes speculative writers make—and how to avoid them.
Practical exercises you can apply to your own novel immediately.
Download the free Writer’s Notebook that accompanies this episode:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zrvW4E3kAb3xVmJEitvEgiGLetwhV2fC/view?usp=sharing
For more writing resources, articles and coaching, visit:
https://www.thebookcoach.co
If you enjoyed this episode, please consider following Master Fiction Writing and leaving a rating or review. It helps more writers discover the show and become part of our growing community of serious storytellers.
Less stress. More story.