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USING DIALECT IN FICTION
Whatever dialect you choose to use, make sure you’re doing it justice. Unless you’re from the town or city or state or region that you’re writing about, and so know, firsthand, the details and words and accents and how people speak, make sure to do your research. Be thorough. The last thing you want to do is write a novel in Jamaican Patois and get everything wrong, because you’re translating everything literally, ignoring the cadence or common phrases for things and situatio
Cully Perlman
May 127 min read
WRITING TIPS FOR ADVANCED WRITERS
I liken all of the parts of a novel to baking a cake. Yes, we may have all the ingredients—the flour, the sugar, the vanilla, the milk, the butter, but now it’s time to learn how to put them all together so the cake is not only a cake, but it’s a cake that you want to eat until you can’t eat anymore. Until you must unbutton those jeans of yours and you’re on the brink of diabetes. Until writing great fiction becomes an addiction you can only satisfy by getting more of it
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May 530 min read
Reading Like a Writer: Educating Yourself on Craft
The great William Faulkner compares reading to a carpenter’s apprenticeship, encouraging writers to analyze both good and bad work. Stephen King emphasizes that reading is a mandatory tool for writing. A.L. Kennedy, who has written a lot of fiction and nonfiction (including one of my favorite books, On Bullfighting, advises reading broadly and deeply to absorb good writing. And Francine Prose, who I met in grad school at the University of Tampa, says, “If we want to write, it
Cully Perlman
Apr 229 min read
YOUR NOVEL’S FIRST CHAPTER CHECKLIST
Don’t try to be clever. It’s fine to have an unreliable narrator, but if you’re trying to trick your readers into believing one thing when something else is true, unless you’re an incredible writer, all you’re going to do is frustrate your readers. They’ve come for a story, not a confusing piece of literature written by an author who thinks she’s so smart she can skip the work that goes into writing something worth reading. Red herrings work, but not always. They must be done
Cully Perlman
Apr 166 min read
READING LITERATURE FROM AROUND THE WORLD TO HELP IMPROVE YOUR OWN WRITING
Murakami writes minimalist prose that is surreal, and often deals with themes of memory, existential longing, alienation, and lonely men living mundane lives but who face metaphysical, magical-realist, and fantastic or strange, surreal journeys. Early in his career Murakami wrote by translating his thoughts from English to Japanese. This process morphs into something slightly different in his later works, but the American influence is there in his pop culture references.
Cully Perlman
Mar 2510 min read
3 Great Examples of Dialogue in Fiction
, Ernest Hemingway changed the way writers wrote during the Twentieth Century. His “iceberg theory” revolutionized dialogue because unlike the writing that came before him, Hemingway’s writing created tension in what was not said rather than what was said. Characters in Hemingway’s fiction are evasive when it comes to what they say (he uses a lot of subtext), his characters are short on words, the language is not elevated or highbrow, he uses repetition to show obsession and
Cully Perlman
Feb 1013 min read
BOOK REVIEW: STONE ANGELS by Helena Rho explores the sexual exploitation of Korean women and girls during the Asia-Pacific War
We’re reminded of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, when Macbeth stares at his hands out of a sense of guilt: “Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood / Clean from my hand?” Macbeth asks. If you know anything about Korean culture, you know how prominent the concept of avoiding shame is, as well as how important traditional displays of respect are, especially concerning the halmeonis and hal-abeojis, the grandmothers and grandfathers, who rule over Korean families
Cully Perlman
Feb 98 min read
YOUR EVOLUTION AS A WRITER FROM BEGINNING TO FOREVER
Beginning writers are easy to spot. Often, it’ll only take a line or two for someone with experience to realize what stage of writing you’re at, and what they’ll expect to encounter as they read your short story (most writers begin writing short stories, as they are, well, short, and thus less intimidating to attack when learning how to write). I was a beginning writer many years ago, and I recently found a few of my short stories. They were better than I expected, but they w
Cully Perlman
Feb 312 min read
FREE NOVEL MASTER CLASS WRITING RESOURCES
We figured because it's the holiday season, we'd post some free novel master class writing resources. There are a lot of templates out there that you can purchase, some online, some in Word documents, Google documents, Excel spreadsheets and so on, but I find free resources or templates you create for yourself based on your needs to be the best ones, especially since there really is no need to pay for something you don’t have to.
Cully Perlman
Dec 22, 202515 min read
5 Great Examples of Scenes in Novels
When we read fiction, we love a lot of it (if the book is well-written), but it’s always the scenes that we remember. The scenes are what’s visual for us, even above description, though the term “description,” when you’re first starting out as a writer, might trick us into believing that’s what we’ll remember, i.e., the things “described” by an author because they’re visual. Now, I’m not saying that that is always the case, but it pretty much is, at least in my view.
Cully Perlman
Nov 18, 202512 min read
IS FINDING TIME TO WRITE IMPOSSIBLE?
Finding Time to Write is up to You. We're all Busy. We all have Jobs. Ask Yourself This: Do I Really Want it? For some people, the answer is absolutely. For others, not so much. I bring this up today because someone in one of the writing groups that I’m a part of on social media made the comment that they weren’t able to start anything because they weren’t going to be able to finish it, or something to that effect. They have a full-time job (I don’t even think they have kids,
Cully Perlman
Oct 28, 20256 min read
Mastering the Craft: How to Write Crime Fiction*
Flat or stereotypical characters undermine the emotional impact of crime fiction. Develop multidimensional personalities with believable motivations, relationships, and flaws. Avoid clichés—such as the “alcoholic detective” or “evil genius”—unless you can bring fresh insight or depth. If you won’t want to go to the alcoholic detective, maybe she is a heroin addict or has a mental illness.
Cully Perlman
Sep 26, 202510 min read
The Complexities of Writing Literary Novels
In literary fiction, plot often takes a back seat to character. The focus is on the interior lives of protagonists—their fears, desires, contradictions, and growth. Creating nuanced, believable characters is a complex endeavor. It requires empathy, psychological insight, and a willingness to confront uncomfortable truths. Literary novelists must avoid stereotypes and stock figures, instead drawing on memory, observation, and imagination to breathe life into their creations.
Cully Perlman
Sep 25, 20255 min read
Learn How to Write Fiction
Read Widely. There’s no substitute to reading good books on the craft of writing but also books in the genre you want to write in (assuming you’re writing fiction). Read with intention. Read out of your comfort zone. As Francine Prose says, Read like a writer. That means focus on what’s working and what’s not working. How does an author make you feel emotion? What words does the writer use? How do they create the worlds in which their characters live?
Cully Perlman
Jul 15, 20257 min read
Cutting Your Novel Down to Its Essential Components
As writers, we dive deep—into our emotions, into the research we conduct so that we get every detail correct, every accent right, and that we pull from our readers the emotions within them that will keep them interested and thus keep them reading. To do that, we must focus on the book we’re trying to write. We need to understand that we have a central character that wants something and who goes after it, despite opposition. She never stops seeking what she wants, no matter wh
Cully Perlman
Jun 4, 20255 min read
Book Review: MY DARLING BOY. John Dufresne takes us on a Journey into a Dark, Drug-Fueled Florida.
As most parents of addicts know, addiction is a chronic medical condition with recidivism rates holding north of fifty percent.
Cully Perlman
Mar 12, 202511 min read
What You Leave Out of your Novel is More Important Than What You Leave In
I’ve written first drafts in three weeks, and others in six months. Some have taken me years. Jack Kerouac wrote On the Road in three weeks.
Cully Perlman
Feb 4, 20256 min read
Unlocking Your Writing Potential: How to Read with Purpose for Better Results
The point of reading something line by line is that you get down to the minutiae. You read each line to understand what's going on.
Cully Perlman
Jan 15, 20256 min read
GETTING PUBLISHED
Know your target publications before submitting your work. Know what their word count limits are. Do your research on them.
Cully Perlman
Nov 19, 20249 min read
Happy Veterans Day - A Short, Short Story
"Ray sat back down and drank the beer and watched Jr. smoke his cigarettes until he slid his foot off the stool and stood up and walked off"
Cully Perlman
Nov 11, 20242 min read
Writing is a job. It's fun. It's trying. It's hard. But if you're committed to getting published, you have to put the work in. Come to Novelmasterclass.blog to get tips, read and watch interviews and book reviews, and learn how to write.
THE LOSSES
A novel
"I've just read Cully Perlman's hefty, ambitious, and radiant debut novel, The Losses, and I was flat knocked out. This is much more than a promising first novel by an inordinately gifted writer; it is a dazzling literary achievement. Perlman is an enchanter, casting his spell with lyrical prose, evocative details, and spellbinding characters. He explores familial chaos, reckless behavior, and tragic love with poise, savvy, and tenderness. What talent, what nerve, what a wondrous and spellbinding novel."
--John Dufresne
A RESOURCE FOR WRITERS
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