Mystery Guide
There's a crime and it's going to get solved—often by a detective, but a surprisingly large amount of time by a little old lady or a bookstore owner.
Horror Guide
No matter the subgenre, all horror shares an overarching theme: fear. Whether it’s splatterpunk, serial killer, supernatural, or anything else, every book in this genre is a spine-tingler. You can never go wrong in ramping up the fear factor, and the good guys don’t always have to win. And where there’s not fear, there’s tension. Every horror reader wants tension. They want to be concerned for the safety — and often sanity — of the characters. You need to make those characters relatable and then put them on a path to destruction. Like every thriller has a ticking clock, every...
Historical Fantasy Guide
Historical fantasy reimagines history if magic existed. The Napoleonic War with dragons. The Romantic poets as vampire hunters. Victorian England protected by a league of sorcerers. Let's face it, history is more exciting with a bit of fantasy thrown in.
Grimdark Guide
Grimdark is the unwanted bastard of high fantasy. The battles are graphic and gory, the politics dirty, the protagonists venal, corrupt, selfish, and flawed—and those are the good guys! But there's something refreshing about everyone in the book acting like humans in all their cheating, lying, duplicitous glory.
Portal Fantasy Guide
A portal fantasy is when your main character is transported to a new, magical world. The transport being magical is less important than the world they land in being magical. I would consider Outlander a historical romance, though the protagonist is transported to the past by magic. But there is nothing magic where she lands.
Intrusion/Urban Fantasy Guide
Intrusion fantasy is where fantasy or magical elements intrude into the real world. The Fay fighting their wars in the streets of Minneapolis in Emma Bull's The War for the Oaks or a monster coming to help a bereaved child in Patrick Ness's A Monster Calls.
Epic/High Fantasy Guide
Epic fantasy is what most people think of when they mention the fantasy genre. It is the big book, sweeping epic, secondary world fantasy that started (mostly) with Tolkien and his many imitators and continues on today with immensely successful writers like GRR Martin, Robin Hobb, and the independently published Brandon Sanderson.
Fantasy Guide
Fantasy is one of the “What if…?” genres that characterize speculative fiction. But in fantasy, the answer to that question is always going to be magic, eldritch, otherworldly—but to varying degrees, depending on the subgenre. The subgenres of fantasy are wildly divergent. Pay close attention to the differences, because some are so far from each other, it seems strange to put them in the same overarching genre. A modern urban fantasy book bears almost no resemblance to an epic fantasy. And this is in all particulars, not just the text of the book itself. Cover, blurb, tropes, tense, point of...
Why Written Well?
Why Written Well? We’re so glad you asked, because we love to talk about what we do here. Our goal is to help aspiring authors navigate the world of self-publishing. To achieve that goal, we offer the information authors need in a complete step-by-step process that is organized and easy to understand. We have everything a self-published author needs to know, all compiled by people who make a living writing. Let’s go on a quick tour of the site to show you what we have to offer. Genre Guides Our Genre Guides are the heart of our site. They are …
Thriller Guide
Thrillers are about tension and movement, long odds and fighting to overcome them, and a hero so brilliant and determined that they win despite everything being stacked against them. They may have to make a big sacrifice, but in the end the hero saves the world. Thrillers are usually written in third person, specifically, in third person limited. It’s a visceral genre, so first person is good, too, but thrillers often feature complex and/or convoluted plots that need several viewpoint characters to work. For first person, make sure your plot is on the simpler side, the twist demands the reader...