Zainah Yousef

Many writers nowadays are choosing to create stories centered around a female protagonist, and while some do a great job, others miss the mark in a number of ways. Many times, they create stereotypes rather than strong, compelling female protagonists, which is very disconnecting for readers. Today, I’ll be teaching you how to create a […]

I know that themes often tend to be one of those things we dread having to analyze in English class, but as writers, themes are actually very helpful to include in our books. Themes add a sort of depth to the story and the overall narrative and helps readers connect with what’s being told to

When it comes to telling stories, most of the books you’ll end up reading are very heavily character-driven. What this means is that you need to focus on properly developing your characters in order to make your story more memorable. That’s why creating memorable characters is a key point in the story-writing process. So, for

Research is a very important task that is often honed-in on a lot in English classes, but it is a vital thing to understand for almost every discipline of study out there. Beyond the classroom though, even us writers and authors need to do a lot of research when we’re writing a book. A lot

The idea of myth and mythology has been existent in the human world for centuries, with ancient myths still being told to this very day. I can’t really think of a single person that doesn’t know about Greek or Egyptian mythology and at least some basic knowledge of its stories. Myths are powerful, as they

The plot of your story is essentially the skeleton that you will need to fill in with words. The plot outlines everything major in your story, such as the beginning, the middle, the climax, the end, and the resolution. Creating an interesting and powerful narrative requires that you understand how to plot your story properly,

I’m a big fan of the romantasy genre and it’s really an enjoyable subgenre of both fantasy and romance. Romantasy revolves around a romance story that is set in the context of a fantasy world. These stories focus heavily on a story of love which is tested by peril, conflict, or something similar. Basically, think

Self-publishing is not a new concept, but it’s definitely picked up a lot in recent years. For a long time, there was a sort of reputation that had been built up around self-published books in that many believed they were of lesser quality, were poorly written, or not worth the time to read. Fortunately, we’ve

One of my favorite genres in literature aside from fantasy has to be the thriller genre. It also happens to be one of my favorites in movies and TV shows as well, and it tends to be a very popular genre in general. A thriller requires a lot of different elements besides just action, as

A prologue often sits at the very beginning of the book and serves as a sort of strange introduction to the story you’re about to read. At first, the prologue may seem confusing, introduce strange characters and places, or throw you into the middle of the story at a random point. However, the prologue actually

Writing challenges are always a really good way to get yourself into the writing mood and to actually push yourself to get on that manuscript you’ve been juggling ideas for. Of course, the most famous writing challenge probably ever is NaNoWriMo. I’ve engaged with NaNoWriMo plenty of times before, including Camp NaNoWriMo and I really