by Amelia Loken | Oct 18, 2026 | Writing Craft
By the time I picked up Wonderbook by Jeff VanderMeer, I had become a devoted student of writing craft. I’d spent years learning about structure, pacing, character arcs, plot points, and story milestones. Books like Story Engineering, Save the Cat!, and Story...
by Amelia Loken | Sep 27, 2026 | Writing Craft
When I first picked up Story Genius by Lisa Cron, I was in the middle of an intense season of studying story structure. My critique group and I were learning to think like engineers, dissecting manuscripts with terms like Midpoint, First Plot Point, and character arc....
by Amelia Loken | Sep 11, 2026 | Writing Craft
For my first five years as a writer, I focused almost entirely on mastering the craft of prose. After joining SCBWI, I was invited into a critique group made up of an eclectic mix of picture book creators, middle grade authors, and YA novelists. The mentors in that...
by Amelia Loken | Sep 4, 2026 | Writing Craft
I read Stephen King’s On Writing early in my writing journey. At the time, I was voraciously searching for writing craft books that might help me understand how stories worked and how writers actually learned their craft. The funny thing is that I had never read...
by Amelia Loken | Aug 29, 2026 | Writing Craft
Learning the Language of Story When I first read Save the Cat! by Blake Snyder, I was about a year or two into writing my first novel. Like many aspiring writers, I had spent most of my life consuming stories without fully understanding how they worked. I didn’t...
by Amelia Loken | Aug 21, 2026 | Writing Craft
Innocence or Ignorance? Early in my writing journey, nearly eighteen years ago, I didn’t have a road map. I had a story I loved, a stack of library books, and the kind of earnest determination that makes you believe you can figure out anything if you squint hard...
