STAGE 01

Idea & Inspiration

Find your story’s seed

Every novel begins with a spark. Learn how to capture, develop, and test your story ideas before committing months of your life to them.

ARTICLES IN THIS STAGE
Where Story Ideas Actually Come From

Every novel starts with an idea, but where do they come from? The science of creativity reveals that ideas are collisions between existing knowledge, and that your brain has dedicated machinery for producing them. Here's how to put it to work.

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KEY CONCEPTS

Glossary terms for this stage

Afrofuturism

A cultural and literary movement blending African diasporic culture with science fiction, ...

Alternate History Worldbuilding

The craft of building a world where real history took a different turn, then following the...

Anthropomorphism

Giving human traits, emotions, or behaviors to non-human things like animals, objects, or ...

Archetype

A universal character pattern rooted in human psychology that appears across cultures and ...

Biopunk

Science fiction focused on biotechnology, genetic engineering, and the consequences of man...

Book Club

A group of readers who pick the same book, read it on a shared schedule, and meet to talk ...

Cli-Fi

Fiction that centers climate change as a driving force of the narrative, exploring its cau...

Commercial Fiction

Fiction designed to reach a broad audience through compelling plots, accessible prose, and...

Cultural Worldbuilding

The craft of designing customs, values, art, food, fashion, and daily life that make your ...

Cyberpunk

Near-future science fiction exploring high technology and low life, where corporations rul...

Dark Academia

Fiction set in elite academic institutions with an atmosphere of intellectual obsession, m...

Dystopia

Fiction set in a society that has gone terribly wrong, used to critique real-world politic...

Novelium

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