At The Write Practice, we publish a new article each day designed to help writers tackle one part of their writing journey, from generating ideas to grammar to writing and publishing your first book. Each article has a short practice exercise at the end to help you immediately put your learning to use.
Check out the latest articles below or find ones that match your interest in the sidebar.
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ProWritingAid is a grammar checker and style editor meant to help you improve your writing and become a better writer. How does it work? And would it be a useful tool for you? I tested it to find out, and I’ll break it all down for you in this ProWritingAid review.
If you’re looking for a surefire way to improve your story, you’ll be happy to know there’s a fast-acting method at your disposal. According to writing expert James Scott Bell, it’s “the fastest way to improve any manuscript.”
I’m talking about dialogue.
But here’s the thing—dialogue is more than just the words you put in your characters’ mouths. On screen and stage, it’s the actor’s job to take his lines and infuse them with meaning, expression, emotion, and so on. On the page, that’s your job.
Earlier this week, I read “Poppies,” a short story by Ulrica Hume, one of our authors on Story Cartel. Initially, I had only planned on skimming a few pages, but the first line hooked me. Before long, I was finishing the last page.
Great first lines have that power, the power to entice your reader enough that it would be unthinkable to set the book down. How, then, do you write the perfect first line?
Do you want to write but just need a great story idea? Or perhaps you have too many ideas and can’t choose the best one? Well, good news. We’ve got you covered. Below are one hundred short story ideas for all your favorite genres. You can use them as writing prompts for writing contests, for stories to publish in literary magazines, or just for fun!
Get started writing with one of these short story ideas today.
How do you defeat procrastination, write more in less time, and do it with less struggle? Two words: writing sprints.
Word sprints are an amazing writing tool that you can use to improve your writing. Sprinting pushes you to write more words fast, by forcing you to start writing and ignore your inner editor.
They also get you to concentrate on one of the most important ways to improve your writing life: consistent practice.
With continuous practice, word sprints can even help you develop a writing habit that will empower you to write and actually finish a novel or a screenplay—and maybe even develop a career as a writer.
But what are writing sprints? And how can you use them effectively?
I’ll teach you in this post!
An em dash is a versatile punctuation mark that looks like an extended dash. It is used to break up a longer sentence, usually to insert a phrase into the middle or end of a sentence, to add modification phrases to a list, and sometimes to show a break in narration or conversation. Let’s look at when to use an em dash, and learn the keyboard shortcuts to make them!
For the writer, there’s nothing harder than writing the first chapter and final chapter of a book. It is here that all of your perfectionism rears its ugly head calling for a full halt to your progress.
I’ve written and rewritten my first chapter dozens of times, and I’m not alone. Most writers struggle figuring out how to start their novel, and it makes sense. Your first chapter can make or break your book: with readers, agents, and publishers.
So then how do you do it? How do you write a good first chapter? In this post, I’m going to walk you through the ten things you need to accomplish in your first chapter, and give you a checklist that you can use in your novel.
Writing a book is hard. I’ve written seven books and at some point during each one I had the thought, “There has to be a tool, a piece of book writing software, that would make this easier.”
Bad news/good news: writing a book will always be hard, and the best piece of writing software in the world won’t write your book for you. But the good news is there is book writing software that can make the process a little easier.
In this post, we will cover the ten best pieces of software for writing a book and look at the pros and cons of each.
Valentine’s Day has a complicated history depending on who you ask. It’s been called a celebration of a martyr, a festival heralding a coming spring, and a holiday for lovers.
But you don’t have to frame it as a romantic holiday to have fun with one of these fun writing prompts today.
Whether you’re self publishing or you have a traditional publisher, it’s up to you to sell your books. Email marketing is the number one way to sell books. But in order to use email marketing effectively, you first have to gather a list of email addresses, a group of readers who want to hear from you.
Struggling to build your list? Try this.
