Becca Puglisi | Writers In The Storm

Fear's Toxic Cousin: THE FATAL FLAW

Guest Blogger — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 08:48:00 +0000

A character’s fatal flaw is the primary obstacle they must overcome to reach their goal. Becca Puglisi shares how to identify and use these flaws.

The post Fear's Toxic Cousin: THE FATAL FLAW first appeared on Writers In The Storm.

Differentiating Narrators in a Multi-viewpoint Story

Guest Blogger — Mon, 20 Oct 2025 08:02:00 +0000

Writing in multiple viewpoints is a great way to explore a story from more than one angle, but it creates problems if readers can’t tell who’s talking.

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Characterize with Clothing Choices

Guest Blogger — Mon, 16 Oct 2023 08:10:00 +0000

A character’s clothes can say a lot about them. Becca Puglisi shares how to zero in on a few details of your character's clothing to reveal without stating.

The post Characterize with Clothing Choices first appeared on Writers In The Storm.

The Difference Between Character Archetypes and Tropes

Guest Blogger — Fri, 21 Apr 2023 08:44:00 +0000

What exactly is a character archetype? How many are there? How are they different from character tropes? Becca dives in to make sense of these powerful tools.

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First Pages and Character Emotion

Guest Blogger — Wed, 10 Apr 2019 11:00:02 +0000

by Becca Puglisi As I’m sure you’ve heard roughly a gajillion times, your story’s first pages are very important. Editors and agents typically request just a portion of your story’s opening, and potential buyers read only a sampling when they’re looking for books to buy. So whichever publishing route you take, those first pages are […]

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How To Create a Fascinating Cast of Characters

Guest Blogger — Mon, 18 Feb 2019 12:01:20 +0000

Angela Ackerman shares a tool for taking your story's cast of characters to the next level. Building twice the character in half the time? Yes, please!

The post How To Create a Fascinating Cast of Characters first appeared on Writers In The Storm.

9 Tension-Building Elements For Character Dialogue

Guest Blogger — Fri, 21 Dec 2018 12:00:57 +0000

by Becca Puglisi I’ve been thinking a lot about dialogue lately, because when it’s done poorly, it pulls me right out of the story. There are a lot of issues that contribute to weak dialogue: incorrect mechanics, stilted speech, characters calling each other repeatedly by name (Hi, Bob. Hey, Mary. Could you help me with […]

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Subterfuge in Dialogue

Guest Blogger — Mon, 10 Jul 2017 11:00:57 +0000

Becca Puglisi Dialogue—good dialogue—is tricky. Mechanics can be learned; the rules are readily available and are hammered into us by teachers, editors, critique partners, and countless Facebook memes. The hard part of writing good dialogue is nailing the back-and-forth, the natural ebb and flow that turns dialogue into convincing conversation. This is the part that […]

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Crafting a Powerful Set-Up

Guest Blogger — Mon, 09 Jan 2017 12:00:48 +0000

Becca Puglisi As authors, we all know the importance of engaging our audience within a book’s first few pages. It’s called grabbing the reader: captivating them in a way that makes them want to stick with the story to its end. Michael Hauge prefers the term seducing: “Everybody likes to be seduced; it’s a gradual, […]

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