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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I know how it is. It’s a three-day weekend. You get caught up in the barbecues, the family time, the sunshine, the sales at the mall… and whatever else. You sleep in and soak it up.
Then Tuesday morning comes, you drag yourself out of bed, and as you sip that cup of coffee you realize, oh man, you haven’t even thought about that manuscript for an entire three days.
As writers, a good portion of our time seems to be dedicated to waiting. You wait to hear back from agents, you wait for contest results, you wait on e-mail replies, you wait for your critique partners to read your projects, etc. And if you’re like me and aren’t the most patient person, the waiting can be hard.
A pitch session is a five to ten minute period of uninterrupted time with an agent. Here’s how to make the most of that opportunity.
I’ve been thinking today about what makes a setting like Hogwarts so great.
We’ve all spent a lot of time at school, many years of our lives. School is familiar, relatable, “homey.”
Thus it makes perfect sense to set a young adult novel series in a school. And many writers have done this, not just J.K. Rowling.
I’ve started a new novel, as in a blank page 1 in need of 275 – 400 more pages written to be complete. I’m lucky, because this book is second in a series, so I already have the plot and framework in mind (sort of ). I just require about 70,000+ more words to fill in the blanks.
It’s so simple, but difficult to do.
Fortunately, I’ve completed four other novels and will publish book #4 later this year. I’m trying to apply what I’ve learned in the past to remain more sane this go-round. Let’s discuss three pitfalls I’ve learned with first drafts.
I was a junior in High School when I was first introduced to satire. I had been affluent in sarcasm for some time, but it was in my AP English class that I first became very, very confused.
It’s May, which means we’ve hit the beginning of the summer blockbuster season! Explosions, car chases, larger-than-life heroes—what could be more fun? It's enough to inspire a writer to write one for herself (at least, this writer). But whether on the screen, or the...
Good stories are made up of moments: good moments, bad moments, but most of all, life changing moments.
A writer’s job is choose the best, most essential moments in a character’s life and throw the rest out.
True menace is hard to write.
Spoiler: Writing a good villain is not about superpowers. It’s also not about backstory. Both of those can help you write a menacing antagonist, but they can also make your antagonist simply silly, or so sympathetic that readers forget to be scared (I’m looking at you, Loki).
When I heard that author, director and all-around nerd royalty Joss Whedon was reprising his dual roles in the screenwriter’s and director’s chairs for Avengers: Age of Ultron, I came to the theater armed with a notepad, figuring I could take home some stellar writing tips from the guy who poured so much of himself into this film that he nearly died of exhaustion.
