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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Creative inspiration hits us every day, whether or not we realize it. The trick is knowing when to be listening for those ideas. While we go through the motions of our day, we should pause every now and then and listen to our subconscious. When are the best times? Here are five examples.
I've considered myself a writer for years, but a storyteller? I thought that just came with the territory. It wasn't until I listened to an interview between Write Practice founder Joe Bunting, and writer Kevin Kaiser that I realized the two are very different. The...
Ernest Hemingway said, "The first draft of anything is shit." Ann Lamott said, "What I’ve learned to do when I sit down to work on a shitty first draft is to quiet the voices in my head.” And I say, "Nope. Your first draft is not shitty. Your first draft is not a pile...
The first chapter of a novel is arguably the most important–if a reader isn’t hooked, she won’t keep reading. And if that happens, nothing else you write matters.
When I first started writing seriously, I burned everything I wrote because I was afraid of anyone reading it. The reason I’m sharing this is because I now know my inner critic was the cause of each of these moments of self-doubt. In this post, I want to show you to outwrite your inner critic.
The other day I met a woman who wanted to be a writer. She immediately peppered me with questions (and fears), and I actually had some answers (and words of encouragement).
Good books, good stories, are about problems not solutions.
This is something I tell my students, my ghostwriting clients, my contributors on The Write Practice. I say this again and again because people rarely realize it.
Readers want something that’s real. They want to live in your novel. They want to become your characters, and feel every joy and heartache right along with them. They want to see, smell, hear, feel, taste. Our struggle as the writer is to deliver to them what they want. Our careers and our very lives depend on how the readers feel. No pressure, right?
In the animation class I am taking, one of the first lessons on developing a character to animate, is to think about how the character stands. To develop the character through posture.
A hero is no hero at all unless there is something to stand against. That’s where villains come in.
villains
We love to hate them, but they serve a critical function within the anatomy of a story, the yin to your protagonist’s yang.