A character walking into a room might seem like simple scene logistics, but an entrance can reveal far more than movement. It can show power, fear, desire, belonging, exclusion, secrecy, status, and change before anyone says a word.

In this episode of Master Fiction Writing, Stuart Wakefield explores the doorway scene: those small but potent moments when a character crosses from one emotional territory into another. Whether your character is arriving at a party, entering a meeting room, returning to a family home, stepping into danger, or trying not to be noticed, the way they enter can quietly reshape the whole scene.

You’ll learn how to use entrances and arrivals to create story pressure, deepen character dynamics, reveal shifting relationships, and strengthen subtext without making every doorway feel grand or symbolic. This episode also includes practical revision questions and a simple writing exercise to help you spot underused threshold moments in your own manuscript.

The middle of a novel is often where writers begin to worry. The opening had energy, and the ending may be in sight, but somewhere in between, the story starts to feel slow, repetitive or strangely... directionless.

The usual advice is to raise the stakes, add conflict or introduce a twist. Those tools can help, but what if the real problem isn't that your protagonist needs more obstacles? What if they need a deeper understanding of what their goal is going to cost them?

In this episode, Stuart explores why a compelling middle does more than make a character’s original desire harder to achieve: it changes what achieving that desire would mean. Whether you’re writing romance, mystery, thriller, speculative fiction, historical fiction or family drama, you’ll learn how the middle can reveal the emotional, moral or personal question hiding beneath the visible plot.

You’ll also get a practical exercise to help diagnose a middle that isn’t working and uncover the more difficult question your story may be waiting to ask.

What actually makes a thriller a thriller? It isn’t just murder, spies, guns, plot twists, or car chases.

In this episode of Master Fiction Writing, we take a deep dive into the thriller genre as a pressure system: sustained threat, escalating stakes, urgent choices, controlled information, and the nervous anticipation that keeps readers turning pages.

We’ll explore how thrillers differ from mystery, suspense, horror, and crime fiction; how to create tension without constant action; why stakes need to be specific and personal; how twists differ from revelations; and how writers in any genre can use thriller principles to make their stories more compelling.

If you’ve enjoyed this episode and you’d like to support Master Fiction Writing, you can buy me a coffee over on Ko-fi. The link is https://ko-fi.com/masterfictionwriting

Does every protagonist really need to change by the end of a story? Not always.

In this episode, we look beyond the familiar “your character must change” advice and explore positive arcs, negative arcs, steadfast characters, ensemble stories, and intentional stasis.

You’ll learn how to ask the better craft question: not “does my protagonist change?” but “what moves?”

Do your characters keep feeling sad, furious, lonely, ashamed, or devastated on the page... but the reader still isn’t feeling much?

In this episode of Master Fiction Writing, we’re looking at the difference between explained emotion and experienced emotion. You’ll learn why naming a feeling isn’t always the same as creating it, and how to give the reader stronger emotional evidence through behaviour, body language, thought patterns, sensory detail, dialogue, silence, subtext, objects, and action under pressure.

We’ll also look at when it’s perfectly fine to name an emotion directly, why over-explaining is such a normal drafting habit, and how to revise emotional labels into moments the reader can actually feel.

The takeaway: your job isn’t to hide emotion from the reader. Your job is to make emotion happen inside the reader.

If you enjoy the podcast and would like to support future episodes, you can buy me a virtual coffee over on Ko-fi: ⁠https://ko-fi.com/masterfictionwriting⁠

No pressure at all, but it does help keep the podcast going, and lets me pretend I’m a terrifyingly organised media empire.

In this episode of Master Fiction Writing, we untangle one of the most confusing pieces of fiction craft: third-person point of view.

Because “write it in third person” sounds simple enough until you realise third person can mean several very different things.

We’ll look at five major forms of third-person narration:

1. Third-person objective, where the reader only sees what can be observed from the outside.
2. Third-person limited, where we stay inside one character’s perspective at a time.
3. Third-person deep or close limited, where the prose moves tightly into a character’s lived experience.
4. Third-person multiple limited, where several characters carry the story in separate scenes or chapters.
5. And third-person omniscient, where a larger narrative intelligence can move beyond any one character’s mind.

Using the same scene, we’ll explore how each form changes the reader’s experience of intimacy, tension, voice, distance, and information.

This is a practical, example-led episode for writers who want to understand not just what point of view is, but how to choose the right kind of third person for the story they’re trying to tell.

And if you enjoy the podcast and would like to support future episodes, you can buy me a virtual coffee over on Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/masterfictionwriting

No pressure at all, but it does help keep the podcast going, and lets me pretend I’m a terrifyingly organised media empire rather than one man talking earnestly about point of view into a microphone.

In this episode of Master Fiction Writing, we explore one of the most quietly intimidating parts of writing fiction: creating characters when you’re afraid of getting them wrong.

Inspired by a listener question, this episode looks at the difference between research as preparation and research as protection. Research, plotting, and worldbuilding are essential tools, especially when your story is inspired by real histories, cultures, political conflicts, or human suffering. But sometimes those tools can become a very respectable hiding place from the messier, more intimate work of character.

We’ll look at why character work can feel so exposing, how to begin before you feel perfectly ready, and how to invent responsibly without becoming paralysed by fear. You’ll also learn practical ways into character, including dictated monologues, private letters, character complaints, petty desires, contradictions, and the wonderfully freeing “ugly first character pass.”

If you’ve ever delayed writing because you felt unqualified, uncertain, or afraid of causing harm, this episode offers a calmer, braver way forward. Not certainty. Not perfection. Just care, humility, specificity, and the courage to begin.

If the podcast helps you with your writing and you’d like to support the time, thought, and mildly alarming number of notes that go into each episode, you can do that here: https://ko-fi.com/masterfictionwriting

Should you cut words like saw, felt, heard, realised, and remembered from your fiction? Often, yes. Always? Not even slightly. In this episode of Master Fiction Writing, Stuart breaks down why so-called filter words and mental-processing verbs get flagged so often, how they can weaken immediacy and increase psychic distance, and why the advice to remove them can become unhelpfully rigid when treated as a rule rather than a craft decision. You’ll learn the difference between lazy filtering and purposeful usage, when these words genuinely flatten prose, when they’re necessary, and when they can actually strengthen voice, pacing, and emotional effect. With practical examples, revision guidance, and a more nuanced way to assess your own pages, this episode will help you stop editing by superstition and start editing with discernment.

Need a gentler kind of story without sacrificing plot? In this episode, I’m diving into the craft of cozy and feel-good fiction and unpacking how to write low-stakes stories that still have tension, momentum, and emotional payoff. We’ll look at why readers are drawn to comfort fiction, especially when real life feels relentless, and why “low stakes” never means “nothing matters.”

I cover the key ingredients that make this kind of story work, including character goals, emotional stakes, tone, pacing, setting, community, and the subtle engines of anticipation that keep readers turning pages. I also talk about what goes wrong when cozy fiction becomes shapeless, sentimental, or overly reliant on “vibes,” and how to create genuine emotional refuge without draining the story of movement or meaning.

Whether you already love writing warm, hopeful fiction or you’ve been quietly suspicious of anything described as cozy, this episode will help you see the real craft underneath it. Because writing comfort well is not easy. It’s structure in a soft jumper.

What makes a female character feel dangerously compelling rather than flat, clichéd, or simply “unlikeable”? In this episode, Stuart explores how to write wicked women with complexity, power, and emotional truth. From villains and antiheroes to politically sharp schemers and socially inconvenient women, this is a deep dive into the craft of creating female characters who refuse to behave nicely on the page or stage. With literary examples including Medea and Lady Macbeth, plus practical tools you can apply to your own work, this episode will help you write women who are morally complicated, dramatically alive, and impossible to ignore.