Over the past couple of months, we’ve covered dystopia, utopia, action, adventure, magical realism, children’s literature, satire, and a whole lot of fantasy. This clip show puts some of those writing tip segments together for you as a literary aperitif before we begin Season 9, where we'll be talking about blending all of these flavors together to create your signature genre. I'm very much looking forward to that.

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If you have plot bunnies coming out of your plot holes, it’s time for a writing break.

Over the past couple of months, we’ve covered dystopia, utopia, action, adventure, magical realism, children’s literature, satire, and a whole lot of fantasy. This clip show puts some of those writing tip segments together for you as a literary aperitif before we begin Season 9, where we'll be talking about blending all of these flavors together to create your signature genre. I'm very much looking forward to that.

Valentine's Day is coming up, and while you won't find me paying a premium for the pleasure of going out that particular day, I like the concept of a day that celebrates love. I like that it is a day where some people find the courage to profess their love to someone for the first time. I quit my last corporate job to go freelance on Valentine's Day, many moons ago. In a sense, it was a way of telling my former boss and one particular co-worker how I felt about them that day, but really, it was about my love for editing and giving myself the opportunity to do it on my own terms.

And this podcast lauched the day after Valentine's Day, four years ago. It is now the best part of my editorial life, and I'm grateful that you choose to listen.

Some of you have told me that you listen to the clip shows to fall asleep. I'm not even mad about it. Maybe I should start a sleep podcast of just soothing writing tips.

For now, I'm in need of a strong, hot cup of coffee, the Writing Break cafe is open, and they're playing a Spanish song about finding love on a February night.

From Episode 142: Writing Magical Realism: Extraordinary in the Everyday

In magical realism, impossible things happen every day, and no one finds them all that strange. Ghosts might visit their living relatives for dinner. A woman might cry so many tears she floods a town. A man might carry the scent of oranges wherever he goes.

The magic is treated as part of life. Characters accept the supernatural the way we accept rain: sometimes welcome and sometimes inconvenient, but always real.

This acceptance is what sets magical realism apart from fantasy. Fantasy builds entirely new worlds where magic has rules. Magical realism lives in our world, where magic just occurs from time to time, unannounced, unexplained, unfathomable, but not quite unexpected.

Cuban novelist Alejo Carpentier coined the phrase lo real maravilloso, meaning “the marvelous real,” to describe the beauty and strangeness of Latin America itself. To Carpentier, magic wasn’t a fantasy. It was simply the truth of the Americas: a place so rich in contradiction that it could only be described through wonder.

Then came Gabriel García Márquez, whose One Hundred Years of Solitude became the cornerstone of magical realism. His village of Macondo feels both mythic and ordinary, where insomnia plagues and time loops endlessly. The style of magical realism spread quickly. Everywhere it travels, magical realism gives voice to silenced histories and assures us that the irrational can still be true.

Here’s the paradox of magical realism: to write it well, you must treat the impossible like fact.

That means no dramatic reveals, no explanations, no “but how?” kind of thing. The characters never question the magic, so readers don’t either.

The world stays grounded. The magic feels subtle and integrated rather than theatrical. The narration is calm and factual even when describing something impossible.

Let’s look at a few examples.

In Like Water for Chocolate, emotions literally flavor the food. When the protagonist cries into her cooking, everyone who eats it feels her sorrow.

In Beloved, a ghost takes physical form to embody trauma and memory.

In One Hundred Years of Solitude, a town forgets the names of things, and residents label their world with signs to remember: “This is a cow.” “This is milk.”

None of these stop to explain why this one magical thing is happening even though the entire world isn't magical. The magic serves to reveal what’s already true about human experience and emotions, especially love, grief, guilt, and memory, in a vivid and unforgettable way.

So when you’re writing magical realism, remember that the magic must express something true about your characters’ inner lives.

Magical realism thrives on tone. The best magical realism stories balance humor and heartbreak, the mundane and the mystical. The prose is often lyrical, sensory, and patient. It lingers.

To capture the right mood, describe the ordinary with reverence and the impossible with restraint. Write as though everything you’re describing is perfectly natural, even a woman turning into a bird.

Magical realism often emerges from places and people whose realities have been denied or erased. To this end, the themes are vast but interconnected. There's colonization and resistance, focusing on reclaiming indigenous myths and identities. There's memory and trauma, which gives us things like ghosts as history that refuses to be buried. There's family and fate. That's where you get generations repeating cycles until someone breaks them. There's love and loss, which gives us the sacred and the sorrowful intertwined.

Globally, magical realism shifts shape. In Japanese writing, it’s introspective and surreal. In African storytelling, it’s communal and spiritual. In Caribbean literature, it dances between colonizer and ancestral worlds. Every culture that embraces magical realism uses it as a mirror to make sense of reality rather than to escape it.

Three pitfalls can break the spell of magical realism. One, over-explaining the magic. If you rationalize it, it becomes fantasy or sci-fi. Which, coincidentally, is an argument I had this morning with an author. Two, using magic for spectacle instead of meaning. The wonder must reveal emotional or cultural truth. Three, forgetting the realism. If everything is magical, nothing feels grounded. Keep one foot in the ordinary world.

Let’s revisit One Hundred Years of Solitude for a moment. The story isn’t really about magic; it’s about memory, time, and loneliness. The magic simply amplifies those truths. When Remedios the Beauty ascends to heaven while folding laundry, the miracle isn’t the ascent but how natural and calm it all is. Refusing to marvel is a hallmark of magical realism.

From Episode 143: Writing Children’s Literature: Picture Books to Middle Grade

Children’s literature is not a single genre. It is a developmental spectrum shaped by how children think, feel, and read at different stages of their lives. Picture books are usually read to children by adults. The rest of the time toddlers are gnawing on them and smacking them. And I gotta say, gnawing and smacking books is just something we should continue into adulthood. Early readers and chapter books are often read with children as they gain confidence. Middle grade books are read independently.

Each category is shaped by cognitive development, emotional maturity, reading ability, attention span, and the context in which the book is read. If you write the same story the same way for all three categories, it will not work.

Many new parents read to their children and think, I can do this. And maybe some can, but not because it’s easy. Children’s literature is not training wheels for real writing. It is one of the most disciplined forms of storytelling.

Writing for children teaches clarity, intention, and respect for the reader. It forces you to strip away anything unnecessary and focus on what truly matters in a story.

Let’s start with picture books.

Picture books are complete stories with a beginning, middle, and end, often told in fewer than one thousand words. Sometimes far fewer.

That constraint makes story economy essential. Every word must move the story forward, contribute to rhythm or tone, or leave intentional space for the illustrations to do their work.

In picture books, illustrations carry at least as much weight as words; although I would say that the person reading to the child or speaking to the child about the book carries the most weight, illustrations come in second, and the wonder of words comes in third. If the words describe everything happening on the page, the text is doing too much. The text provides the structure and emotional spine of the story. The illustrations provide motion, expression, and visual storytelling.

How picture books sound when reading aloud is of the utmost importance. Rhythm matters. Repetition matters. Musicality matters. Children respond to patterns, predictable phrasing, and language that feels good to hear again and again. Take Zin! Zin! Zin! A Violin, for example.

Picture books can have big themes with stories that explore fear, belonging, curiosity, emotional regulation, kindness, and change. They dramatize emotional experiences in ways children can recognize and process, but they do not lecture.

If you’re not doing your own illustrations, then your picture book requires collaboration with an illustrator. You will have to release some control here because what you’re envisioning might not be what they illustrate, so pick your illustrator carefully. You may direct them, but you will not dominate them. Common mistakes in picture books include overwriting, explaining the lesson instead of dramatizing it, forgetting that illustrations exist, or writing primarily for adults rather than children.

If you want to try your hand at picture books, attempt a picture book story in under five hundred words where the emotional arc is clear even if the illustrations were removed, while still leaving room for visuals to enhance the story rather than duplicate it.

As for early readers and chapter books, these books often represent the moment when a child realizes they can read independently. At this stage, your job is to tell a good story and build confidence in the reader.

Early readers and chapter books must respect reading level expectations. That includes vocabulary choices, sentence complexity, page density, and repetition. Accessibility does not mean talking down to the reader. It means writing clearly and intentionally so the child feels capable rather than overwhelmed. The language must be simple enough to read independently and engaging enough to hold attention. The story must move quickly. Too much complexity causes frustration. Too little causes boredom. But I guess that’s true for all fiction books.

Also true for all fiction is that characters and character arcs are important. Young readers want protagonists they can relate to and root for. They want clear goals and visible progress. They want to feel smart while reading.

The best early reader and chapter books balance simplicity with emotional depth. The conflict is understandable. The resolution feels complete. Nothing feels confusing or overly complicated. The story moves forward with momentum and purpose.

Common pitfalls include inconsistent reading levels, overcomplicated plots, flat characters, or language that shifts unpredictably in difficulty.

From Episode 144: Writing Action & Adventure: Stories in Motion

Adventure and action stories are about external movement and external stakes. This is not an inward-facing genre. While characters still grow and change, the primary engine of the story is physical: a journey, a mission, an escape, a pursuit, or a discovery.

Adventure stories are often structured around a clear objective, a hostile or unpredictable environment, and obstacles that must be overcome through ingenuity and endurance.

Readers come to adventure and action for momentum. They want to feel carried away. They expect spectacle and danger. They want to see your hero swinging, climbing, and crashing. There should be a clear line between the protagonist and whatever stands in their way, whether that’s an enemy, the environment, time, or all three. The story earns its meaning through what characters do, not just what they think, but this does not mean the writing is shallow.

In action and adventure, pacing and escalation are key. These stories thrive on forward motion. Scenes should end with momentum, and even the quieter moments exist to reset the tension rather than to remove it. A chase scene should not just be running in a straight line. It should introduce new problems, blocked paths, collapsing terrain, unexpected allies, sudden betrayals, and injuries that slow the hero down.

Each challenge should be harder than the last, more dangerous than the last, and more costly than the last.

The cost is going to be physical, emotional, or moral. Just like in mystery and detective stories, in action and adventure, nonstop action without variation is draining to both the reader and the author. Make sure to insert short pauses, strategic lulls, and moments of regrouping so that the next surge of action hits hard.

Then, there is your story's setting, which in action and adventure books are often unfamiliar and deadly locations. The environment should create obstacles, raise stakes, and direct action. In this way, the setting is an active participant in the story.

For example, in adventure writing, a desert might exhaust the characters and mountains might isolate the characters. If the setting could be swapped out without changing the plot, then the setting is not doing enough work.

So, what about your protagonist? This hero doesn't have to be clever or have a great deal of emotional insight, but they do have to be resilient. They are not invincible. They do get hurt, and they get tired, and they fail. And then they keep going. They survive by adapting, improvising, and refusing to quit. The reader should feel that survival is earned. And don’t forget the internal conflicts. Readers want a hero they can root for, and no matter how spectacular your adventure is, readers need at least one reason to care.

Now, let’s talk about what trips writers up. The first pitfall is endless action with no arc. If every scene has a fight, a chase, or an explosion, readers stop processing what’s happening. Action only works when it changes the situation. There must be consequences, and every trial should reveal something. Maybe it reveals what the hero values or what they’re afraid of or what they’ll sacrifice to keep going. Adventure protagonists succeed because they endure longer than the danger lasts.

The second pitfall is when authors write "video game levels.” So that means the hero clears one obstacle, then the next, then the next, but nothing builds. The challenges feel repetitive rather than escalating.

To avoid this pitfall, ask yourself three questions per obstacle: (1) Is this obstacle different from the last?; (2) Does it force a new decision?; and (3) Does it raise the stakes?

Adventure stories endure because they tap into the human desire to move forward, to explore, to discover, and to survive uncertainty. They remind us that courage means doing the thing even when you're scared.

From Episode 145: Writing Dystopia & Utopia: Pushing the Real World to Extremes

A dystopia is an imagined society designed to warn us. It exaggerates real-world problems and pushes them to an extreme. The problems are often authoritarianism, surveillance, inequality, and environmental collapse. A utopia, on the other hand, is an imagined society designed to test an idea. It asks: What if we organized the world differently? What if this system actually worked? And in both genres, the story is answering the same two questions: What kind of world are we building? and What does it cost to live in it?

Readers come to these genres expecting social and political commentary, immersion in a fully imagined system, a strong “what if” premise, and consequences, both intended and unintended. There is no subtle background world-building. In dystopia and utopia, the society is the story. Dystopian fiction is fundamentally about warning. It takes something already present in our world and asks: What happens if this keeps going? Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid's Tale is not about the future. It’s about existing power structures taken to their logical extreme; structures like gender control, religious extremism, and state surveillance. Good dystopia doesn’t invent fear from nothing. It reframes fear we already recognize. That’s why dystopias feel so uncomfortable. When you’re writing dystopia, ask yourself: What system is being critiqued? Who benefits from that system? Who is harmed by that system? And what happens to someone who refuses to comply?

Now utopias, on the other hand . . . utopias often get dismissed as boring or unrealistic, but that’s usually because we misunderstand what they’re doing. A true utopia is about design rather than perfection. Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed explores an anarchist society that has eliminated many traditional hierarchies, but it still struggles with conformity, stagnation, and human ego. Utopian fiction asks: What values shape this society? What has been sacrificed to achieve harmony? Who feels fulfilled here, and who doesn’t? The most compelling utopias reveal cracks beneath the surface because humans are complicated. A utopia becomes interesting the moment someone questions it. That’s why these genres often feel heavy on world-building. The reader needs to understand how the society functions in order to understand why the conflict matters. Characters are shaped by these societies. They’re rewarded by them and punished by them. Laws create conflict. Customs limit behavior. Architecture reinforces ideology. And technology shapes relationships. But the story still moves through people. We experience the system through a single life, a small rebellion, or one forbidden act. The world may be the protagonist or antagonist, but characters are still our point of entry. Now when I say that society is the antagonist or a protagonist . . . you still need a protagonist, an actual character protagonist, and you definitely need antagonists.

Now, let’s talk about what can go wrong. The biggest danger in dystopian and utopian fiction is preachiness. If your story starts sounding like a manifesto, readers will check out. Your job is not to tell readers what to think. It’s to show them what it feels like to live inside your imagined system. Another common pitfall is sacrificing plot for ideology. Big ideas are meaningless if nothing is happening. People need to want something, fear something, and risk something. And finally, avoid building a society so rigid that it leaves no room for surprise. If everything is predictable, there is no tension. Remember that systems break under pressure.

Dystopia and utopia endure because they let us examine our present from a safe distance. They allow us to test ideas without consequences and to imagine futures we fear, or futures we hope for, and ask what choices might lead us there. In dystopia, society is the villain. In utopia, society is the dream. And in both, humanity is the variable.

From Episode 146: Writing Satire & Humor: The Sharp Edge of Comedy

Satire and humor are often thought of as lighter genres, but they are two of the sharpest weapons a writer can wield to disarm the reader. In these genres, authors can get away with saying things that just would not fly in other genres. Humor uses exaggeration, irony, absurdity, wit, and surprise to entertain. It can be playful, dark, dry, ridiculous, or understated. And satire uses humor to criticize systems, like institutions, cultural norms, power structures, and human behavior. Humor is a tool, and satire is a purpose. A story can be humorous without being satirical. A satire, however, is meant to be humorous, while usually making some really strong points.

Readers of satire and humor books expect a few things. They expect a strong, confident voice. Even if a character or even the narrator is written to be intentionally neurotic and unsure, that should come across clearly and show that the author knows what they're doing. Just like in stand-up comedy, readers expect the writer to punch up, which means the humor is aimed at those with more power or privilege than the comedian. Readers of satire and humor also expect excellent comedic timing, and they expect intention; even the silliest satire knows exactly what it’s aiming at.

Keep in mind that there are different types of humor, and you don't have to write all of them. There’s wordplay, which includes puns, clever phrasing, and linguistic surprises. There's slapstick, which relies on physical mishaps and exaggerated action. Then there's situational humor, which is where the comedy emerges from circumstance rather than jokes. Absurdism takes it further, where logic breaks down entirely and that breakdown becomes the joke. And then there's dark humor, which lets us laugh at things we’re not supposed to laugh at--these are topics like grief and trauma.

Writing comedy is harder than you might think; even just writing a comedic scenes is harder than you might think. Humor should emerge from characters and situations, not from the author elbowing the reader and saying, “Did you get the joke?” Your characters or the sitation that they're in should be funny because of who they are. If they’re funny only because they’re delivering punchlines, it won’t work. For example, you could have a character who's funny the whole book but obviously serves another purpose in the plot, or you could have a situation that juxtaposes your serious character's personality and attitude, and that makes it funny for the reader.

Now satire critiques the present by exaggerating it, reframing it, or pushing it just one step further than feels safe. For example, George Orwell lived under a monarchy, so Animal Farm is not really about farm animals. It’s about power and propaganda, as well as how revolutions rot from the inside out.

Good satire creates a system and then lets the system reveal its own absurdity, without lecturing us. So, when you’re writing satire, ask yourself: What institution am I critiquing? Who holds power here, and who suffers? And what happens when the logic of this system is followed all the way through?

I also want you to be sure that you're managing your tone without losing your story. This is where a lot of writers stumble. Humor is not the same as chaos.

Your jokes still have to provide forward motion for your plot. They still have to serve your characters and your themes. If every line is trying to be the funny line, the story stalls. And if the humor undercuts emotional stakes at the wrong moment, readers disengage.

Tone management means knowing when to pull back. Sometimes you have to let serious moments stay serious, and you have to let consequences land on the characters. And remember that contrast is what makes humor effective, such as a joke after or during a moment of tension.

Satire works best when it respects the emotional reality of the people inside the joke, even if it’s merciless toward the system that is trapping them.

Now let’s talk about what goes wrong for authors when writing satire and humor.

As I've already alluded to, one pitfall would be punchlines without story. If nothing would change if you removed the jokes, the jokes are not adding anything to the narrative and can impede your book's pacing.

The second pitfall would be mocking without purpose. Remember that satire punches up and not sideways. If your humor targets vulnerable people instead of power structures, readers will feel the cruelty, and they won't like it.

A third pitfall would be cleverness without clarity. Remember that confusion is not depth. If readers can’t tell what you’re critiquing, the satire collapses.

And one final pitfall I can think of right now would be mistaking irony for distance. Satire still requires emotional investment. Readers need to care about at least one of your characters, even if the world itself is ridiculous.

Comedy is meant to make us laugh, and satire is meant to make us, or the powers that be, uncomfortable.

I hope you enjoyed this bonus episode. Next week, we begin mixing and expanding and blending genres. Tune in for more writing tips and the latest publishing news and book trends.

Thank you for making space in your mind for The Muse today.

Writing Break is hosted by America’s Editor and produced by Allon Media with technical direction by Gus Aviles. Visit us at writingbreak.com or contact us at podcast@writingbreak.com.