If you’ve ever told a good story—one that has your friends or family on the floor laughing, or else on the edge of their seat asking, “What happened next?!”—then you know that you can’t get to the point of the story too quickly.

Instead, you draw out interest. You talk about all the things that went wrong. You make jokes and accentuate the best details. When you’re done, it’s not the punchline people remember; it’s everything leading up to it.

The same is true when you’re writing a story, particularly in novels, memoirs, and screenplays. It’s called the Rising Action, and it’s essential to get it right IF you want to write entertaining, informative, and deeply connecting stories.

In this article, I’m going to talk about the rising action: what it is, how it works in a story, how it’s been treated by scholars who study story structure throughout history, and finally how you can use it to write a great story.

If you are planning on writing a story, there is something you need to consider besides basic plot structure. You need to determine your Inciting Incident.

What incident will compel your protagonist to act, prompting them to move through a meaningful story?

Let’s take a look at what an inciting incident is and how to write one.

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.

How do good stories start? In the middle of the action? With a slow buildup to the action?

Exposition is a literary term that deals with how to start a story.

In this article, I’ll define exposition, talk about how it fits into the dramatic structure, give examples of expositions from popular novels, plays, and films, and then give a few tips on how to use the exposition best in your writing.

Have you ever fantasized about writing a Hollywood movie? Or maybe, with a bit of luck, create the next Lost.

In a visual age, with the decline of traditional publishing, some look to writing screenplays as a way to create the “literature of the future.”

But what is the process to write a screenplay? How do you even begin? And how is it different or similar to writing a novel? In this post we’re going to look at the five step process professional screenwriters use.

In stories, we get to see the cause-and-effect connections between otherwise random events. We get to experience the deeper meaning in life. We get to see through the chaos of real life and see the underlying pattern.

The literary term for this pattern is story arc, and humans love story arcs.

In this article, we’re going to talk about the definition of story arcs, look at the six most commonly found story arcs in literature, talk about how to use them in your writing, and, finally, study which story arcs are the most successful.

If you’re reading this, you have goals. Maybe you have fitness goals or goals for your family. Maybe you even have writing goals.

But how do you write goals that actually work, that actually help you accomplish the things that you set out to do?

In this post, I’ll share my comprehensive goal writing process, the same process that has helped me finish twelve books, publish over 2,000 blog posts, and reach over twenty million people with my writing over the last eight years.

As an editor, point of view problems are among the top mistakes I see inexperienced writers make, and they instantly erode credibility and reader trust.

However, point of view is simple to master if you use common sense.

This post will define point of view, go over each of the major POVs, explain a few of the POV rules, and then point out the major pitfalls writers make when dealing with that point of view.

What if you could begin your novel without the fear of failing? What if you had a process so foolproof, you knew you would finish no matter what? The zombie apocalypse could finally strike and you’d still finish writing your novel.

The good news is you’ve found the write place (sorry, bad habit).

We recently talked about how long your blog posts should be. Today, let’s talk about how to write a blog post that helps you accomplish your writing goals, and the three blog post templates that can help you accomplish this.

Do you want to write a book? Is 2021 the year you finally accomplish your dream?

A new year is a time for fresh starts and audacious goals. And if your goal this year is to write your book, you’re not alone. One year is the perfect length of time to write and publish a book, as long as you know the right steps.

Looking for a gift for a writer in your life? Or maybe a deal on the best tools and courses for writers? This Black Friday, we’ve rounded up dozens of deals from around the internet to help you find the perfect gift for your writer friend (or yourself!).

You’re writing a paper for school and suddenly you stop in the middle of the sentence. You have to write a book title but you don’t how to format it? How do you format a book title in MLA? Good news: you’re in the write place (sorry, I had to).

In this post, we’ll talk about MLA style and formatting, whether it’s appropriate for your project, and most importantly, how to write a book title in MLA.

Hey writers. Well, it’s been a weird, hard, interesting year, right? The good news is 2020 is almost over (thank goodness), and as we start looking ahead to 2021, I want to hear from you. What are you struggling with as far as your writing goes? How can The Write Practice help you?

The falling action is a literary term you hear thrown around in middle school writing classes and on creative writing blogs, but what is it? And will it actually help you understand, and maybe write, a good story?

In this post, I’m going to define falling action, talking briefly about its origin as a literary term and its place in dramatic structure, and then talk about whether you should incorporate it into your story structuring process.

Spoiler alert: you shouldn’t.

Most great stories, whether they are a Pixar film or a novel by your favorite author, follow a certain dramatic structure.

When you’re getting started with writing, understanding how the structure works is difficult. Even if you go back and analyze your favorite books and films, it can still be hard to structure your own stories. That’s where Freytag’s Pyramid can help.

Now, when I go to bookstores I see them automatically, the little with’s and and’s next to celebrity authors’ names. However, when I first found out a friend had ghostwritten a bestselling book by a major author, I didn’t know what the word “ghostwrite” meant, not to mention the fact that nearly every celebrity author who has ever “written” a book has used a ghostwriter.

You want to write, but when you sit down to get started, you realize you don’t have a novel idea. Or perhaps you have so many ideas, you’re having a hard time choosing the best novel idea. Or maybe, you already have an idea, but you just aren’t sure if it’s any good.

That’s what we’re here for. In this article are ten questions to help you get started finding your best novel idea. Use them as writing prompts or as a way to make your current idea better.

This week, it was our goal to get Sarah Gribble’s debut novel, Surviving Death, into the #1 bestselling spot in its category on Amazon. We worked hard for it, came so close, and just narrowly missed. In this post, I want to share what we did to get so close and why we missed, and talk about whether it really matters.

How do you sell more books? This is a question I hear frequently from authors in our community. When you’ve done the hard work of writing a book, when you’ve even managed to get your book published, it would be nice to be able to get your book into the hands of readers. But anyone who has published a book knows that selling books isn’t simple.

That’s where Publisher Rocket, a powerful piece of book marketing software, comes in. What is Publisher Rocket, and will it help you in your book writing and marketing efforts? In this post, I’ll be sharing my Publisher Rocket review. I’ll also talk about how I personally use the tool.