# Lessons

> Short lessons on the craft problems a check finds in fiction: dialogue tags, rhythm, names that drift and point of view. Each one has worked examples, before and after, and says when to keep the habit.

- [Tags and beats](https://openatelier.co/lessons/dialogue-tags.md) (Dialogue): A speech tag tells the reader who is speaking. When it starts telling them how, it competes with the line it belongs to.
- [Rhythm and voice](https://openatelier.co/lessons/dialogue-rhythm.md) (Dialogue): Dialogue is not a transcript. It is speech shaped for the reader: shorter, sharper and more distinct than real talk. Read it aloud as you revise; where you stumble or run out of breath, the reader will too.
- [Names and continuity](https://openatelier.co/lessons/continuity-names.md) (Continuity): Readers keep track of your people and places by their names. When a name drifts, they stop to work out whether someone new has arrived. A story bible is only as good as its last update: when you rename someone in revision, change the entry first, then check each chapter again.
- [Point of view and filtering](https://openatelier.co/lessons/pov-filtering.md) (Point of view): The reader lives inside your point-of-view character. Every “she saw” and “he felt” reminds them they are outside, watching someone else have the experience.
- [Tense and person](https://openatelier.co/lessons/pov-holding.md) (Point of view): Every story chooses when it is told and who tells it. Once the reader has settled into a tense and a voice, a change they were not meant to notice reads as a stumble.
- [Clutter](https://openatelier.co/lessons/prose-clutter.md) (Prose): Some words go into a sentence while we are thinking and stay after we have finished. Taking them out rarely loses anything, and the sentence stands up straighter.
- [Echoes and repetition](https://openatelier.co/lessons/prose-echoes.md) (Prose): Readers hear prose even when they read in silence. A word that comes back too soon, or sentences that all open the same way, catch the ear like a skipped note.
- [Stock phrasing](https://openatelier.co/lessons/prose-stock.md) (Prose): Some phrases have been written so many times that readers no longer see them: a heart that pounds, a silence that stretches. They tell the reader a feeling happened without letting them feel it.
- [Backstory](https://openatelier.co/lessons/scene-backstory.md) (Scene): Everything that happened before page one is backstory. Readers want some of it, at the moment they want it, in the amount the scene can carry.

Free lessons on the craft problems the check finds. Each is plain Markdown at the link.