SJ Stone

(via Creating Characters - Make Your Characters Believable)

I think dialogue is a great way to start because you get so much from that. For me, because I don't really do any pre-work on character or story, other than having a basic idea of how it starts and how it ends, I usually don't really know my characters at all. I have no concrete details -- mousy, smart, overly enthusiastic about everything, stoic, salacious. I learn those as I go, but starting with dialogue is a great way to let your character breathe out loud for the first time so you can get a sense of who they are very quickly. Voice is so critical.

More than dialogue, for me, is that I approach it a bit differently. I write a ton of 1st person perspective, and so the inner monologue, which fills my stories, is how I arrive at voice the most, and how I arrive at how this character is this way or that way.

(via Let Me Tell You a Story about a Story I Wrote - by SJStone)

We’re thoroughly into ‘beach read’ season, so what’s your go to genre? Trope? How long should a beach read be? Should it be a weekend getaway length and leave the book behind for someone else? Let the book get sandy, wet, crinkled pages, or if it’s hot (not that kind of hot, this kind), the pages stick together.

I like to finish books on vacation, write in the front cover where and when I read them, then leave them behind for someone else to discover and read. Maybe they make a note, too. The story becomes a journey.

(via The Fictional Newsletter 6/8/2026 - by SJStone)

It’s been a long time since I wrote a newsletter — life has been so chaotic! But I’m back in the saddle, doing lots of writing, so let’s get back into newsletters agin.

Earlier this year, I shut down The Fictional: After Dark. It was great there, nice following, lots of spicy stories, but it was simply too much to keep up with. It was overwhelming, especially as things got more difficult at work, and the world seems to be doing its best to come apart at the seams.

(via 7 Rules For Satisfying Murder Mysteries)

We feel that we have pinpointed exactly what makes for a satisfying mystery novel, which we contend must be “fair play”—one the reader can solve before the solution is revealed. While it’s true that plenty of readers don’t care to play along with a novel’s fictional detective, a novel should be written to the standards of its genre’s most ardent fans (i.e. mystery readers who prefer to race the detective to the solution).

As writers who appreciate pushing the boundaries of fiction (see Where Futures End and The Reader trilogy), Traci and I acknowledge that rules are meant to be bent—or broken—and we therefore happily challenge our fellow writers to write a satisfying murder mystery that flaunts these rules or blends these conventions into those of other genres.

(via Solve-Along: The Honjin Murders by Seishi Yokomizo (Chapter 1))

What’s The Novel About?

In the winter of 1937, the village of Okamura is abuzz with excitement over the forthcoming wedding of a son of the grand Ichiyanagi family. But amid the gossip over the approaching festivities, there is also a worrying rumour—it seems a sinister masked man has been asking questions about the Ichiyanagis around the village.

S.J. Stone’s review of The Tainted Cup | Goodreads https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8662606927