“Ask Jane” Shorts

In this video, we explore ways in which you can keep raising the stakes or escalating conflict in new and exciting ways throughout a series of books. I...

In this video, we examine how to escalate the stakes within a single novel. We discuss the four core sources of conflict and how they interact with stakes. I...

In this video, I look at my final example of a nameless fictional character, Philip Roth's Everyman. As the title suggests, the protagonist of this story...

In this fourth video on nameless characters in fiction, we look what I consider one of the most well-known nameless female protagonists of the 20th century in...

In this video, we look at my third example of a story with nameless characters, Ralph Ellison's _Invisible Man_. In this classic novel, the author uses the...

In this video, we look at my second example of nameless characters in fiction, Margaret Atwood's Surfacing. The story deals with a range of internal and...

In this video, we look at my first example of nameless characters in fiction: Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper." It is a story presented as a...

In this video, we look at an interesting concept: why you might consider having a character in your book remain nameless. I cover four reasons you might...

In this video, we look at why you might think twice before using a name for a character outside the language you're writing the book in. We also discuss best...