Book Writing Courses: What They Teach and What They Miss
Most course comparisons rank by price. The more useful question is what each format actually delivers, because workshops, MFAs, su...
The Obsidian Tavern · articles
Notes from the workbench. Take what you need.
Worldbuilding, magic systems, characters, and the craft of finishing what you start. Everything here comes out of actually building worlds and writing the stories set in them.
145 articles
27 worlds behind them
How to Outline a Book: 5 Methods and a Template You Can Copy
Most outlining advice is really one method dressed as universal law. This walks through five real methods, from a one-page sketch...
How to Write a Book About Your Life: Memoir, Not Autobiography
The reason life stories stall is that a life has no plot, just chronology, and chronology bores readers. This covers the three for...
How to Write a Book: The Complete Process, Start to Finish
Writing a book is four stages, and only one of them is writing. This is the whole process end to end, what each stage is actually...
How Many Words Is a Novel? Word Counts by Genre
A novel is 70,000 to 90,000 words in most genres, but the number that matters depends on what you are writing and who you are send...
I Want to Write a Book. Where Do I Start?
Starting is not a motivation problem, it is an unmade-decisions problem. Five things to settle before you draft, what your first w...
How to Write a Book With No Experience (A First-Timer's Path)
Nobody's first book comes out of training. It comes out of finishing, which is a separate skill from writing and almost never taug...
The 24 Chapter Outline That Finally Made Novel Plotting Click for Me
Derek Murphy's 24 chapter outline breaks your novel into four acts with specific goals for every chapter. Finally conquer the sagg...
13 Best Worldbuilding Tips That Actually Work (Instead of Making You Want to Quit)
Discover 13 practical worldbuilding tips for beginners that actually work. Learn to create immersive worlds without getting lost i...
Iceberg Worldbuilding: Show 10%, Build the Hidden 90%
A reader believes a world when it acts like it existed before the story started. Iceberg worldbuilding is how you build that depth...
Hard Worldbuilding: A Practical Guide to Consistent Worlds
Hard worldbuilding is the systematic, documented approach to fantasy worlds where 'how does that actually work?' has an answer. He...
Soft Worldbuilding: How to Show Less Than You Built
Soft worldbuilding is a deliberate choice to withhold detail so the reader's imagination does the work, not a shortcut for skippin...
Obsidian Worldbuilding: The Complete Guide
Traditional worldbuilding scatters your fictional world across a dozen Word documents that slowly contradict each other. Obsidian...
How to Build a Music-Based Magic System That Actually Sounds Like Something
Sound is already physics, which makes music one of the most groundable magic systems you can build if you treat frequency, rhythm...
Bringing Fantasy to Life: The Art of Writing Engaging Scenes
Master writing engaging fantasy scenes! Create vivid worlds, dynamic characters, and magical conflicts in your stories.
when you’re done reading
Articles get you thinking. Courses get it finished.
Every course in the tavern is a complete framework, not a pile of tips. Take down the one that solves the problem in front of you.