Receive individual attention and in-depth feedback
with an Odyssey Online class!

Bestselling, award-winning instructors.

Only 3 courses per year.  Only 14 students per course.

Application deadline 12/15.  Don’t miss out!

Odyssey has been a pioneer in holding live online classes since 2010.  Live class meetings allow a virtual classroom experience, with students participating in discussions, asking questions, and learning from an instructor responsive to students’ concerns.  Between class meetings, students interact with each other and the instructor in an online group, complete assignments, and give and receive feedback.  Each student also has a one-on-one meeting with the instructor.

Graduates of Odyssey Online regularly praise the extensive content provided in the courses; the challenging, skill-building assignments; and the in-depth critiques from instructors.

While Odyssey’s nonprofit mission is to help writers of fantasy, science fiction, and horror, writers of any genre of fiction are welcome to apply.  Courses will also cover issues relevant to writers of adult, young adult, and middle grade fiction.

Odyssey’s classes will provide you with valuable tools and techniques that can help you make major improvements to your writing.  Become the writer you’ve always known you could be!

Classes: 

The Heart of the Matter:  Bringing Emotional Resonance to Your Storytelling
Course Meets: January 26 – February 23, 2027
Instructor: Award-winning novelist Barbara Ashford
Level:  Intermediate

A major challenge for writers is creating a powerful emotional experience for readers. Ideally, all the elements in your story work together to deliver emotional impact. But few works reach that ideal. Award-winning novelist Barbara Ashford will be teaching The Heart of the Matter: Bringing Emotional Resonance to Your Storytelling. Writers are constantly frustrated to discover that the characters and situations that seem so moving and powerful to them leave readers shrugging and saying, “Meh.” If you want your work to be imbued with emotion, if you want your readers to care as much about your characters as you do, this is the course for you. The Heart of the Matter will not only show you how to get character emotions on the page in a powerful and affecting way; it will explain how to infuse each element of your story—setting, description, character, plot, point of view—with emotion, so emotion resonates through your story with great impact.

Barbara has been an outstanding, top-rated instructor for Odyssey Online for over a decade, sharing her wide-ranging knowledge and providing deep feedback to students that has …

The midterm elections diverted (temporarily) attention from AI, but accusations are swirling that top execs of AI companies were aware their their book piracy was illegal. Oh, and Australia is considering making the process legal. Still, the Authors Guild has issued AI best practices for publishers that will hopefully be followed. Spotify’s audiobooks are spreading globally. Some celebs are sharing their thoughts on book bans. Halloween may be over, but horror bookstores are growing. Hollywood’s interest in translations and backlist books is growing. Kindle Unlimited has a new name. Romance columnist for The New York Times is terminated after sharing a post that criticized the paper’s coverage of new allegations against the president.

AI

AI’s impact on translation

Top execs knew their book piracy was illegal

 Open AI claims copying copyrighted materials is fair use

What AI reading assistants do for readers, authors, publishers

Authors Guild issues AI best practices for publishers

Australia may legalize AI training on your books

 Audiobooks

Spotify audiobooks spread globally

Book Bans

Celebs talk book bans

 Bookstores

Horror bookstores are growing

 Book to Film

Hollywood’s growing interest in translations and backlist books

 Libraries

American Library Association’s Anniversary acknowledges the right to read

The midterms bring good news, bad news for libraries

Publishing

TV shows that look behind the curtain of publishing—realistic?

The global publishing industry, one industry, many markets

Trends move fast, publishing does not

Kindle Unlimited has a new name

Frankfurt Publishing Conference, great books, great parties

What’s the future of independent book publisher, Catapult Book Group?

The New York Times terminates romance columnist…

“Are you actually going to pursue making this a book or are you just playing?”

See, don’t take that text as the wrong thing to say. You need friends like Kate to ground you and ask hard questions.

I sent her back: “Hmmmm.” and didn’t fully answer.

I must admit that the section of a could-be novel I sent was very fun to immerse myself in. Gothic, tense. She said the prose was beautiful, the atmosphere insanely addictive. But…

That doesn’t mean it will turn into a full-fledged novel. It’s a really tough subject matter. And I’m having a difficult time wrapping my head around the climax, weaving everything together, and how commercially viable it is. It doesn’t mean I’ll abandon it, either!

If you’re also struggling if your idea is worth pursuing, here are some questions you should ask yourself:

Can you live in that place for a year or more?

By place I mean: in your main character’s head. That historical time period. With the decisions your characters are making. With all of the quirky things you’ve set into play. In the house you’ve built. With the twist you’re building to. Can you truly live there for a year or more while you draft, edit, draft, edit, promote, market and talk about it?

Does the initial fascination survive once you begin doing the difficult work of writing?

While you’re deep into the idea-building phase, it’s very exciting. But as you get into drafting, at the tricky ¾ mark, you might find the idea has slagged. This is where the story itself, and resolving it, has to be built properly, or you will discover that perhaps this isn’t quite working.

There has to be a full, true, robust story behind that stunning prose you’re flaunting, friends. Structure is the true way to get ahead of the curve here – we have to figure out how the idea itself turns into story. Can you see a clear beginning, inciting incident, rising action, climax, falling action, and conclusion? Even if you’re not a plotter, can you see the story beats that will get you to that beautifully written conclusion? Do you know what happens beyond the central idea–80,000 words of what happens!?

Let’s explore that more …

In the post of mine cited above, I drew a distinction between characters’ emotions and emotional states evoked in readers. Specifically, what characters are reported to feel are not what readers feel. Psychological research proves it. It’s the starting point of my book The Emotional Craft of Fiction.

I want to revisit that distinction. I recently have come to view the utility of characters’ emotions a little differently. My proposition is this: Character emotions possess a value no less or greater than that of scenery.

Character emotions are there on the page, but that’s all. Like passing scenery, we “see” character emotions, especially when they are “shown”, as exhaustively catalogued in The Emotion Thesaurus. We note them and roll on.

“Seeing” a story is half of what makes a story come alive in the reader’s imagination, true enough, but only half. The other half is any emotional condition awakened in readers: an associative state which readers conjure in themselves using recall of their own experience.

Is that an academic distinction? Does it matter exactly how readers’ feelings come about, so long as they do? Well maybe not, but I think that grasping the distinction is helpful in gaining the freedom to write inwardly and to range beyond what is obvious to write in any given story moment.

Evoking emotional states in readers is not a matter of pin-point exactitude, hitting targets of “authenticity” or “truth”. It is the practice of causing readers instead to roam in their minds and hearts: pondering, wondering, examining, questioning, sifting, sorting, recognizing, fearing, judging, accepting, and/or discovering meaning in any given story moment.

Not your meaning, that is, but the reader’s own. And for each reader that meaning will be different.

How

To get at what I’m talking about, it might be useful to look at what happens to us, as readers, when we encounter emotional states evoked in stories which inherently have few ways for us to associate; stories, that is, about characters or creatures far different than we. Such stories challenge …

This post was first published on Election Day in 2018! It seemed a fitting day to revisit it. Vote on, friends! 

It’s Election Day in the U.S., which you surely know unless you’re living under a sound-proof stone that hasn’t been picked up and thrown at someone. Hard to believe that a few short years ago many of us rarely expressed controversial opinions, choosing to be ‘polite’ rather than overtly ‘political,’ yet here we are.

So let’s talk broadly about tipping points for a minute, and tune in to story.

Consider your protagonist’s world view at the start of your tale:

• What won’t she do?
• What won’t she say?
• Whom would she never betray?
• What or whom does she trust implicitly?
• What or whom would she give up to achieve her greatest desire?
• For whom or what would she make significant sacrifices, even lay down her life?

Now think through what it would take, in each instance, for her to change her mind; to be pushed and shoved out of her comfort zone; to be rattled by a proverbial stone against her skull, or even to pick one up herself.

Don’t tell me she would never allow herself to be tipped, because I do not believe it, and if you do, then you need to dig harder, my friend. Identify the wildcard in her life, and if it doesn’t exist, then build it.

Need help brainstorming? Consider the effect of the following:

Lies

Liars

Injustice

Insecurity

Corrupt forces

Threats to her future

Threats to those she loves

Threats to things she loves

Disempowerment

Abandonment

Victimization

Brainwashing

Addiction

Poverty

Cruelty

Hatred

Illness

Abuse

Chaos

Pain

Fear

Don’t make her flip of nature too easy, either, or it will read false.

Consider:

• How can these things come from someone or something she trusts or trusted?
• How will she realize she has been fooled or manipulated, or unwittingly acted against her own best interests?
• How will she receive this message, and how hard will she rebel against believing it?
• For how many minutes, days, or years will she plug her ears, shut her eyes, turn her back?
• What can’t she ignore?
• What has she already compromised or sacrificed?
• Whom has she already lost?
• How has she lied to herself?
• How many voices will she dismiss as crazy before something finally filters past, nudges her conscience, makes her wonder?
• What will she do with

Recently, I was lucky enough to attend two books events featuring mega-bestselling authors in the same day. One was a small private event for a lecture series; the other was a large public event with roughly 300 attendees. Both authors write stories set in the past, but their work differs in many other ways. And while the content and form of the events were very different, both authors uttered almost identical words when talking about their writing priorities.

What do they consider most important in writing? “Telling the truth.”

Does this sound odd for fiction writers? It certainly did to me, at first. But after some reflection, I think I understand.

Here are three ways you can tell the truth in your fictional work.

To describe what it was like to live in a place and time. Both authors, as I said, write about specific times in the past in their work. Both of them also write about what women, in particular, experienced in those times: the rights they didn’t have, the sexism and patriarchy they fought against, the restrictions they fought to overcome. One author also described how important it was to her to include, not sugarcoat, the racism endemic in her chosen setting. If you’re writing fantasy, you don’t have to think about real-world conditions, though you may choose to; if you’re writing historical fiction, you absolutely must have an understanding of the society you’re writing about, even if (maybe especially if) your characters are outliers in that society.

To serve your characters, not just your readers. One author responded to an audience question about writing the ending of her latest book with thoughts about types of endings readers tend to find satisfying or unsatisfying. She counseled a writer in the audience to consider several questions, among them, “Are you going to give your readers a happy ending, or are you going to tell the truth?” These things aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive, but you do need to think about whether tying up every single loose end in a big story is a practical or realistic goal. Happy endings, too, can be unsatisfying if you sweep away all the story’s obstacles and solve all your characters’ problems in an overly simplistic fashion. (Deus ex machina, anyone?) It does still sound a little funny to demand realism in fictional genres, but “truth” in the broader sense here applies.

To …

We at writers.com surveyed over 450 novelists at various stages of their work—from those wishing to begin to those with a completed manuscript draft.

Here’s what we learned novelists are struggling with:

Overwhelm.

It takes on three main forms:

1. Self-doubt,
2. Craft challenges, and
3. Anxiety about publishing.

How can we fall back in love with writing our novels? Read on…

1. Self-doubt

The weight of self-doubt often begins before we put a single word on the page. For many of us, beginning to write a novel calls up the question: “Am I the kind of person who could write a novel?” Making your novel a priority to which you dedicate real time—day after day—can feel selfish or like a luxury. You may feel like no one but you is invested in your novel or cares if it’s going well.

The difference is this: successful novelists know what support they need, and how to get it. You shouldn’t feel guilty or isolated in your struggles—you should make sure your experience is the best-supported it can possibly be.

That means a specific word count every week, structure to carve out the time to make steady, tangible progress within your busy life, a mentor who is right there with you and your novel every step of the way, and a supportive community of fellow novelists.

2. Craft challenges

As the words pile up, so do increasingly urgent questions about pacing, dialogue, character development—craft fundamentals we may be unsure how to implement. The story that once energized us now feels distressingly uncertain.

You can learn a lot about these craft elements in craft books, video tutorials, and the like. The problem with these resources is: they’re not reading your manuscript.

Without someone examining your specific words on your specific pages, you may revise endlessly without knowing whether you’re improving the work—or simply rearranging its problems.

You need access to constructive, expert perspective at crucial moments: someone who can answer the practical questions that risk impeding your progress. “Is this element of my novel working? What specifically needs revision? What’s my next step?” You need specific, actionable feedback on your novel while you’re drafting it.

3. Anxiety about publishing

We may imagine years of work ending in form rejections we’ll never understand—and feeling dismissed by an impersonal and impenetrable industry. For some novelists, the fear and uncertainty around publishing prevents them from ever starting. For …

What’s the difference between ordinary reading and close reading?

I’m sure some wag at Writer Unboxed will say it’s all about how close you hold the book to your face, but that’s not it. The difference has to do with something Marshall McLuhan asserted long ago: the medium and the message can’t be separated. How a message is transmitted–TV, film, print, text message, oral presentation—will influence or even shape the message.

By replacing “medium” with “method,” I want to adapt McLuhan’s idea to reading. How is the experience shaped or affected by how we read?

I first met Yoshie Fuentes at a meeting of the Kalamazoo Writers Disorganization (some wags figure there as well). Even though she is less than a third my age, Yoshie and I had a lot to say to each other.

Yoshie Fuentes owns and operates Mi Cocina at the Kalamazoo Farmers Market. Besides digital marketing for herself, she also takes on projects with friends. She attended the University of Greenwich and the University of London, Birkbeck in the UK. 

At some point, we realized we were conducting autopsies on passages of fiction, using the process of close reading. In short, we were studying what happens when the reader stops reading for what comes next, and slows down to read at the sentence level. I’ve written down one of our talks, involving the analysis of four openings and thought some in the WU community may find it of interest.

The first dialogue involves the opening from a bestseller used by Ray Rhamey in his “Flogging a Pro” feature for July 17, 2025. Many good comments were made, but what follows is a more detailed approach to the process.

The opening of Do Not Disturb, by Freida McFadden:

While I’m washing the blood off my hands in the kitchen sink, the doorbell rings.

I freeze, my hands full of pink suds, the steaming hot water causing my fingers to burn and tingle. There’s somebody at the door. Somebody waiting patiently on the front porch for me to answer. The timing couldn’t be worse.

Could it be a package delivery? Maybe they’ll drop the package at the door and go away. Or else leave me a note. Sorry we missed you! We’ll be back tomorrow!

And then: three hard raps on the front door.

“Coming!” I call out in a strangled voice, even though it’s unlikely they’ll

You know how some stories seize you? We’ve all been there—reading a book or watching a show when suddenly, reality fades away, and we’re sucked into the lives of the characters and this fictional world. All else be damned. We want nothing more than to be a part of this new story, to feel their emotions, to cheer for them, to see what happens.

There’s nothing better, right? That’s likely why we’re all here at Writer Unboxed, because we adore the feeling so much that we wanted to try our hand at creating our own sort of escapes.

I’ve been playing a game lately, marking the moment when I feel the talons of great story sink into me. I don’t mean the chapter or the episode; I mean the exact second I’m snagged.

Yes, sometimes, it’s a sentence or a paragraph or an intimate acting moment or a piece of dialogue that bowls me over. Makes me think: The artist behind this work is courageous and brilliant and talented and I want more! We fellow creators are especially vulnerable to well-executed craft. 

But I’m referring to the times when the actual story grabs you by the shirt, when the characters are as real as your lover, when you must know how things are going to work out.

My little game has revealed that the magic moment is most often about suspense. I’ve been thrown into a state of uncertainty, and I’m now desperately clamoring for clarity.

How will she get out of this situation? Is he the killer? Will they end up together? Who will she fall in love with? Will their marriage survive? What wild thing will the characters do next?

The last question is exactly how Howard Stern built his entire career. People tuned in to find out what he’d do next.

Netflix’s Beef plays on the same court (mild spoiler). The first and second seasons are both masterclasses in suspense. Each season features a separate story and cast, but they both explore the idea that a small beef between people will spin out of control if someone doesn’t let up. In an early episode of the second season, one of the characters suffers a medical emergency that she blames on her enemy. To get revenge, she breaks into his house and does something that made my heart stop. Consider me suspensified. It was in that moment …

When people pick up a novel in a bookstore, they often picture its writer as some kind of savant, whipping up perfect manuscripts while living and working in a mountainside villa or clicking away on their laptop while sipping espresso at a bohemian café. But anyone who has ever written a novel, or anything else for that matter, knows this is rarely the case.

Novels, especially good ones, take years of dedicated work to complete, and most of the people who write them are more or less like everyone else. Many writers have day jobs. A close friend of mine writes in an unheated garage. And all of us need to figure out ways to set aside time in our often busy schedules to write.

Most successful writers got that way because of their willingness and ability to sit down and write even when they don’t feel particularly inspired, even when they’d much rather be doing just about anything else. For many writers, the best way to accomplish this is to establish a daily writing routine to which they will actually stick.

Years ago, when I first started thinking about creating a writing routine for myself, the first thing I did was look at what other authors’ routines were like.

Ernest Hemingway was known for his habit of writing early in the morning. In a 1958 interview with The Paris Review, he said, “I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you . . . You write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and know what will happen next and you stop and try to live through until the next day when you hit it again.”

Other authors, like Stephen King, sit down to write at a set time every day and don’t stop until they have reached a pre-determined word count. In interviews, King has often said that he gets to his desk at eight o’clock every morning and stays there until he’s written 2,000 words. He does this every day of the year, and says doing so is non-negotiable, regardless of what else might be happening in his life.

Some writers find it easier to stick to their routines if they write in a particular location. Maya Angelou worked in a rented hotel room every day from seven a.m. to 2 p.m., …