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.
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Plot has a specific structure. It follows a format that sucks readers in; introduces characters and character development at a pace guaranteed to create fans; and compels readers to keep reading in order to satisfy conflict and answer questions.
Do you want readers to love your story? (Who doesn’t, am I right?) Then you need to understand plot.
Growing up is a universal experience with a myriad of variations. Some cultures and families have rituals that young people follow or rebel against to find their way to adulthood or self-actualization. Others are left to stumble through their entire life trying to figure out how to experience happiness.
We often think of coming of age or initiation stories as a journey from adolescence to adulthood, but some adults reach legal age without becoming a mature person. They can undergo a coming of age story much later.
Let’s look at some prompts to write coming of age stories.
So you want to know how to write a coming of age story?
Coming of age is one of the central themes in all of literature, but it’s also a specific type of story in its own right, one of the nine types of stories that we talk about in The Write Structure plot framework.
It’s also one of the few ways we describe all change in a character, one of the two internal plot types! Which means if a character is growing and maturing in your story, no matter what age they are, you might be telling a coming of age story.
“The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.” —Mark Twain
One of the best parts about writing is the fact that you get to pick your words. And we have so many words to choose from! Literally tens of thousands of beautiful words flitting through space, just waiting for you to pinpoint exactly which one to use to describe your protagonist, setting, or climactic scene. However, despite the fact that you have seemingly unlimited options when it comes to word choice, the meaning that you’re trying to express may narrow your selection significantly.
Finishing a first draft is a huge deal. If you just accomplished this, be proud of yourself! At the same time, you might be wondering how to revise a novel after that first draft is done. There’s a lot of advice out there. Which do you listen to?
The revision process doesn’t have to be complicated. However, you might feel—especially if this is your first completed draft ever—intimidated to edit your book. There’s a lot of words and scenes to review. Where do you begin?
In this article, I’d like to share how I took a daunting editing process and created a simplified, concise, and clear strategy to revising your first draft. I do this with what I call a Revision List—a table with five columns that can help you simplify big ideas.
If you’re like me, you won’t ever want to edit a first draft without it!
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.
Adventure stories are built around the life versus death value, meaning that the main conflict and most of the scenes turn on survival. The adventure genre can be set in real life or include an exciting adventure in a fantasy world or other far-flung places most readers will never visit.
Today let’s look at more than 20 adventure story idea prompts to get your own story on its way!
In this story type, the hero and their comrades are attempting to thwart death in the face of an overwhelming physical obstacle, usually in the form of a figure of nature.
This isn’t to say that an adventure story can’t have a villain. However, the primary threats will always come in physical form, forcing the characters to dig deep and find the strength and resolve to endure.
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.
Have you ever wondered which draft you are working on? Do you wonder what the difference is between your first draft, your second draft, and editing your book? You can learn the first draft definition and the differences between drafts in this article.
When writing multiple drafts of a book, you may be halfway through your rough draft and decide to start over. Or you may have written the entire manuscript, but then wish to scrap it and start fresh.
And when considering this, you question: “Am I writing a first draft? Am I editing my novel?”
What does “first draft” mean—or “second draft,” for that matter?
Knowing the differences between first drafts, second drafts, and editing your book will elevate your ability to tackle the writing and editing process. It will help you understand what to focus on when you’re writing—and have fun while you do it!
