Choosing the right character to narrate this smaller story is critical to its success.

A good romance author will tell you that kissing and even sex are not markers of intimacy.

This is the second thing the writers did really well: the writers gave us a really, really powerful distraction.

Good fiction is made up of bad decisions.

Which all begs the question: Why are they selling themselves to this one specific lawyer so hard?

They all prevaricate about her, but they all do it in different ways. This is more about the other characters than it is about Robin.

A Darling is a scene, a character, a line, whatever, that you, as the writer, are completely attached to but it doesn’t actually work.

This is the reality of the Manic Pixie characters: they can't really function.

Stereotype characters are often a sign of lazy writing. This episode gives us a good example of when to use shortcuts.

Ted can’t tell a short version of a story to save his life, so this is the principle we’re learning: postponing a reveal.

Lily and Marshall’s wedding is finally here, and since this is a sitcom, you know absolutely everything is going to go wrong.

Your characters’ false beliefs might affect their behavior like Barney’s.

7 steps to redeeming a villain or antagonist in your writing.

If you’ve gotten to the end of the story, and you don’t feel like you’ve earned it, you need to back up.

This week, we’re talking about closeness and how these storylines demonstrate that these characters are now closer than ever.

This episode isn’t really about the stuff and it isn’t really about the play. Both are just highlighting character conflicts.

To get a story, you have to dig. Either dig into the past, asking “but why?” or “but how?” or dig into the future by asking “so what?”.

They focused on the emotional impact, not the specifics. Barney loses money, the friend group holds their tradition a day late.

This episode opens with a flashback to kindergarten, where Ted wants to be an architect but is bullied for it. It immediately flashes...

This week, we’ll be talking about an old writing adage: Show, don’t tell. A lot of writers get annoyed by this advice because all writing...