Characters show us who they are when they are under stress. One way to create stress for a character and deepen their characterization is to inflict a minor injury. How will they respond? Will their reaction affirm who they present themselves to be? Or will it reveal perhaps another dimension of their personality?
Writing a book with a cowriter can be an awesome experience. But cowriting a book can also spiral into a frustrating mess and an abandoned project if you’re not prepared. How do you know whether you should cowrite a book? And then how do you cowrite a book?
Have you ever written a story you believed in, but couldn’t get it published? Or maybe you’ve had a dream, but after months or even years of pursuing it, you feel no closer to achieving it. That’s not a fun space to be in, but the good news is, you’re not alone.
If you want your readers to not just pick up your book, but keep turning the pages, you need to learn how to write a hook that will draw them through the story so they never want to put it down. Try baiting your hooks with the thrill of danger to keep your readers on the line.
You want to write, but when you sit down to get started, you realize you don’t have a book idea. Or perhaps you have so many ideas, you’re having a hard time choosing the best one. 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 book idea. Use them as writing prompts or as a way to make your current idea better.
Don’t let the blank page win. Get started writing your book today with these book ideas!
You’ve established your story’s Ordinary World. What’s next? It’s time for your hero’s Call to Adventure — a call they must refuse.
What are you passionate about? What drives your writing? And just as important—do you write stories that other people like?
Sometimes the best stories come to us when we are challenged to leave our comfort zone and write something we wouldn’t usually try. In that spirit, to give our writing a boost, let’s make a game out of using a writing prompt.
Do you argue with strangers on the internet? (I plead the fifth). Even if you have enough self-control not to engage most arguments and comment sections, chances are high that you think through how you would argue with them if you weren’t fairly certain they are a troll in an alternate universe. Also if your mother wasn’t your friend on Facebook.
Are you leveraging those thoughts? Or just rehearsing them, allowing yourself to feel irritated and angry? Put that energy to good use for your writing. Your next character is hiding in the comments section of nearly any forum. Here’s how to find him or her.
This week, we lost an incredible writer. Toni Morrison was a novelist, essayist, editor, professor, and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Her perhaps most well-known book, Beloved, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and was made into a movie starring Oprah Winfrey.
In honor of Black History Month, I want to share five quotes from black authors that are sure to give you the push you need to write something fantastic.
Your writing is an art—but if you want to sell books and make a living from your stories, it’s also a business. How do you balance nurturing your creativity with the demands of the market? And how do you do that while also telling stories that connect with readers in powerful ways?
If your aim is to write engaging fiction—stories that people will read and clamor for, even shell out their hard-earned cash to acquire—there is something very important you need to understand. You are an entertainer. And that means you need to know how to write a hook that will capture your reader and keep her turning the pages.
Writing isn’t easy, and writing a good story is even harder.
I used to wonder how Pixar came out with such great movies, year after year. Then, I found out a normal Pixar film takes six years to develop, most of it on the story.
How do you write a story, and more importantly, how do you write one that’s good?
I was scrolling through social earlier today and discovered something amazing: Joyce Carol Oates is teaching a MasterClass! And on short stories, nonetheless, which happens to be my forte. I’m so excited to have the opportunity to take this MasterClass, learn from an unparalleled literary giant, and write a Joyce Carol Oates MasterClass review.
What’s the point of storytelling? Why do we need good stories, and what do they have to teach us about the choices we make? In this episode of Character Test, I talk with one of my favorite editors about his own journey through book publishing and what it takes to write—and live—a great story.
Hey there. It’s me, Joe Bunting. Maybe you’ve seen my name around here. Maybe you haven’t (which is fine). I thought I’d take a second to re-introduce myself and share something I’ve been thinking a lot about in my writing lately.
James Patterson has held a top position on the list of best-selling thriller writers for the better part of two decades, so I jumped at the chance to take his MasterClass, learn his secrets, and add to my thriller writer toolbox. You may be wondering if taking the class would be a good move for you. Stick around for my James Patterson MasterClass review and see what you think.
Nonfiction writing seems like a completely different bear than writing fiction. How do you gather your ideas and present them in a coherent, interesting way? And if someone else has written on the same topic before, should you even bother?
In today’s article, Leslie Malin gives us some great insight into how she came around to writing her first nonfiction book and the lessons she had to learn along the way. And she reminds us that writing nonfiction requires some of the same skills as writing fiction: storytelling.
Getting published is an amazing, exciting process. It can also feel a little mysterious, especially if you’ve never done it before. What does it take to publish? More than that, what does it take to publish successfully—to publish a beautiful piece of writing and share it with crowds of readers?
I recently reached out to several writers in our Write to Publish community to ask whether joining a writing community has helped them get published, grow their audience, and make progress on their journey to becoming bestselling authors.
The stereotypical writer used to be a silent, brooding genius who kept to himself and rarely ventured into the outside world, except to do “research” on how the subjects of his stories lived. People imagined an entire profession of Emily Dickinsons, pale and contemplative.
However, for nearly every famous writer—from Ernest Hemingway to Virginia Woolf, J.R.R. Tolkien to Mary Shelley—this stereotype couldn’t be further from the truth.
And the truth is that nearly every great writer had a Cartel.
