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Writing is all about choices - a story is made or broken by what the author chooses, how they choose to convey it, and even the ways holes they leave behind. Whether conscious or not, the very act of writing involves making millions of tiny choices, and they all matter.

Which is why it's often super interesting to step back and pin down some of those choices, and take a minute to understand why we made them, and what other options might be. So read through the articles below (indeed, any of those in our archives), and take a moment to think about those choices, and how they might be questioned to make something bigger.

Reader engagement is one of the hallmarks of a great novel. Think about it, you haven't heard anyone talk about a novel they love without telling you exactly how hard they were drawn into the story. But when reader engagement is such a tricky thing to nail down, it can be difficult to tell whether your draft has what it takes to be a truly engaging read.

A story is nothing without setting. Even the most basic of tales include some elements of world building. Little Red Riding Hood went into the woods, Old MacDonald had a farm, the chicken crossed the road. Every novel - from fantasy to the most contemporary or contemporaries - benefits from a deeply imagined setting.

World building can, however, be a tricky thing. There's a lot of discussion below on using world building and setting to add depth and complexity to your writing, as well as ways to approach world building as a tool for generating even more content. There are also articles on the importance of setting to POV and tone, and ensuring your world building is grounded in something tangible for readers to seize. As always, there's a wealth of information in the AYAP archives... and we've collected the best of it below.

Character is one of the most important aspects of a compelling story... but sometimes they can be ridiculously hard to get right. Character is intrinsically tied to plot, and it can be difficult to separate the two. Yet a character that resonates with readers can stand on his or her own.

There's a lot of discussion on how to create a relatable character in the posts below, as well as essays on what makes character's strong, and ideas on how to create well rounded characters. There are analyses on the relationship between character and plot, the breakdown on when it's okay not to have a huge character arc, and on building your main character through secondary characters. As always, there's a wealth of information in the AYAP archives... and we've collected the best of it below.

When struck with a shiny new idea, all you want to do is get stuck into creating it into the masterpiece you know it can be. For some of us, that means sitting down and plotting up a storm. For others, it means jumping straight into that first draft. And for some of us, it simply means grabbing a pen and paper and dreaming the day away.

Whatever your preferred method, structure and plot is an important part of making a novel come to life. So whether you're a pantser, or a plotter, or somewhere in between, you'll no doubt find the posts below invaluable. Read on for a collection of posts aimed at shaping your story into the best story it can possibly be.

Beginning a novel is difficult: often we, as writers, will get hit with a brilliantly shiny new idea that just can't wait. Then one of two things happen. Either it truly was a magical idea and the story simply pours out. Most of the time, however, we founder, sputter, and eventually the shiny new idea will be doomed to sit forever in the depths of our hard drive.

If you're in the planning stages of a new project, or you've just been hit by a shiny new idea, the posts below are for you. They're a collection of the best advice we've featured over the years aimed at making sure our story idea is ready to go, so we can see it all the way to the end.

In a little over a month, Adventures in YA Publishing will be turning a whopping 2,000 days old. Two thousand! That's almost five and a half years spent chronicling journeys in publishing, and over two and a half thousand posts written to help writers along the way.

That's a lot of awesome, useful content! But sadly so much of it has been lost to the depths of the archive and rarely sees the light of day.

We're changing that. On the middle Sunday of the month, for the next thirteen months, we'll be highlighting the very best of the AYAP archives, freshly brought up into the light and organised especially to be useful to you on your publishing journey.