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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Sometimes you have to get back to basics. All writers are guilty of making mistakes at some point, and they kick themselves for months after an astute reader notices that they added one too many o’s to their “to.” Once that’s in print, you can’t take it back.
So today, I’d like to draw attention to one common mistake so that you will hopefully never have to take it back: the then-vs.-than debacle.
Memorial Day serves two roles in American culture: the intended one and the unintended one. Today, let’s take some time to write about what makes Memorial Day significant and special.
A vast majority of writers struggle with dialogue. We wonder how to make it real, make it believable, and make it stand out.
What if I told you that you can become a better writer and watch your favorite shows and movies at the same time—and all you have to do is turn on the subtitles?
Today is garbage day in my neighborhood. Naturally, when I went for a walk with my dog Annie this morning, I looked at my neighbors’ garbage. What did people throw away? What did their trash mean? What what can we discover about a person from what they throw away, and how they throw it away?
People leave clues about their character in their trash. Today we will practice character development by writing about someone’s garbage—what they throw away.
Whether you’re a blogger, poet, novelist, or cookbook author, there are certain things all writers are expected to do. Some of them are obvious: all writers should read; otherwise, how will we know what to create? Likewise, all writers need to establish a habit of writing daily in order to pursue their passion.
But writing flash fiction? If you don’t write shorter stories, why should you write flash fiction?
Here are three reasons why.
“The writer’s job is to get the main character up a tree, and then once they are up there, throw rocks at them.” So how DO you get your protagonist in a sticky situation that keeps your reader reading until you type, “The End?”
I’m going to be straight with you — I am a Beyoncé fan. In 2003, I thought I was her. I’ve been to four or five of her concerts. I tried to be cool and not watch Lemonade live, only to discover HBO pulled it a week later. So I bought it. I BOUGHT a music video.
Regardless of your opinion about Beyoncé or her music, we can all agree she’s a success. And today, I’m leveraging my love for Beyoncé to bring you three writing tips that will help you channel her greatness.
In grade school, your teacher had Show and Tell. You brought your stuffed Teddy Bear to class to show your class the bear, and you told them how your Teddy Bear came alive at night and fought the monsters under your bed.
If you wrote a story about the Teddy Bear fighting the monsters under your bed, you could say, “I was scared,” or you could show your fear. Today, we will play a Show, Don’t Tell Game to practice showing and not telling.
Do you have feelings?
Do you wish you could let them go out, terrorize the neighborhood for a bit, and then come home to you without doing any damage (the kind that costs you money)?
Got a pen?
Get ready to write spoken word.
Attitude is everything. You’ve heard it a thousand times. You’ve probably even said it yourself. And yet, sometimes a bad attitude still gets the best of us. Sometimes we hate our writing. Sometimes we hate our agents. And sometimes, maybe, we even hate ourselves.
Over time, these kinds of thoughts can turn into a constant stream of negative self-talk that saps our creative energy and leads us to self-doubt. So how do we fix our bad attitudes and start thinking like a great writer?
