New Daily Writing Guides from The Write Practice

Atmosphere Literary Definition: Genre Examples That Evoke Emotion

Atmosphere matters. You might be someone who will pay a premium to eat at a restaurant with a certain ambience or buy a house in a setting that supports a particular feeling. But how do you use atmosphere in your book?

In like manner, your reader won’t remember every word you wrote, but if you infuse the story with atmosphere, they will remember the way it made them feel.

But how can you weave atmosphere into your story without making it feel forced? How can your story’s atmosphere evoke an emotional response and leave a lasting impression on your readers? How can you leverage this literary technique to enhance that feeling?

A strong sense of atmosphere figures into the works of William Shakespeare. Edgar Allan Poe mastered atmosphere in poems like The Raven and his haunting tales of suspense. J.K. Rowling managed it well in the Harry Potter series.

And you can learn it too.

There are many literary devices and elements of fiction a writer uses to impact the atmosphere of a literary work, including figurative language, word choice, similes, and personification. In this post, we’ll examine how point of view and genre considerations help to set the mood and establish atmosphere.

How to Edit Your Story Like a New York Publisher

by Pamela Fernuik | 44 Comments

You have finished writing the first draft of your story, a version of your whole story from beginning to end. Now it is time to edit, to revise your words to make your story clear and compelling, so the reader will continue reading after the first sentence.

Editing your story might feel like an impossible task, but when you have a strategy to use, you can be confident you can edit your own story and improve your writing.

Whatever you do, do not skip the important step of editing your first draft. According to David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, “Revision is all there is.”

100 Writing Practice Lessons & Exercises

by Joe Bunting | 51 Comments

Want to become a better writer? Perhaps you want to write novels, or maybe you just want to get better grades in your essay writing assignments, or maybe you’d like to start a popular blog.

If you want to write better, you need practice. But what does a writing practice actually look like? In this post, I’m going to give you everything you need to kick off your writing practice and become a better writer faster.

How to Write a Story: 10 Steps to Master the Art of Storytelling

by Joe Bunting | 371 Comments

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?

Could’ve, Would’ve, Should’ve: Fighting the Good Contraction Fight

by Liz Bureman and Elizabeth Nettleton | 15 Comments

In speech, when you contract “could have,” “would have,” or “should have,” you end up with what sounds like, “could of,” “would of,” and “should of.” However, that is not what should be written. The proper contracted forms of could/would/should have are could’ve/would’ve/should’ve.

And yes, could’ve is an acceptable contraction. What is not acceptable is saying “could of” instead, because that is just plain wrong.

10 Writing Hacks to Actually Finish Your Book

by Joe Bunting | 42 Comments

Are you struggling to write? Read on for my best writing hacks to get you writing now.

There’s no getting around it. Writing is hard. Whether you’re writing your first book, crafting an essay for school, blogging, or just writing for fun, there are so many things against you.

First is the time itself. What you could say in five minutes takes a huge amount of time to write into coherent, grammatically sound sentences.

Then there are the distractions: social media, video games, endless sudoku puzzles (my personal kryptonite).

Finally, and perhaps worst of all, there is writer’s block, which can vary from a general aversion to writing to crippling self-doubt and an inability to put any words on a page, let alone something good.

Yes, writing is hard. So hard it’s amazing people write at all, some for fun no less!

The good news is that if you’re having a hard time writing, you’re not alone. Even great writers struggle with distraction and writer’s block. To be honest, I struggle too. I’ve written 15 books and still struggle on a daily basis to write.

At the same time, writing can be amazing, inspiring, fulfilling, even life changing. If you’re struggling to write, in this article I’m going to share all the writing tips to help you get focused that I know. Hopefully at least one of these tricks will get your creativity thrumming, get the words moving, and help you finally get to writing.

So grab a cup of coffee, open up a blank page, and get ready to write.

From Amateur Blog to Pro Blog: How to Level Up Your Writing

by Joe Bunting | 41 Comments

When I first started blogging, I set up a free account with Blogger. It was great. I didn’t have to understand any crazy computer code. I just had to worry about writing. Then, I read somewhere that I should install Google Analytics to see how many people were reading my blog. It took me an hour, but I figured out how to insert the hieroglyphic-looking code into my theme and opened up my analytics page.

I found out there were about seven people reading my blog. That’s it? I thought. That started me on a quest to figure out how to get more people to read my blog.

25 August Writing Prompts

by Sue Weems | 0 Comments

It’s mid-summer and a great time to do some daily writing! Check out these 25 August writing prompts to get your creative juices flowing.

The (Un)usual Suspects: Unreliable Narrators in Film and Literature

by Liz Bureman and Elizabeth Nettleton | 34 Comments

One of my all-time favorite movies is The Usual Suspects. I could watch it on a loop, and I’d still never get sick of it. If you haven’t seen it, I’m going to spoil the ending, and if you keep reading and get mad at me, it’s your own fault because that movie has been around since 1995 and you really should have seen it by now.

The vast majority of the movie is Kevin Spacey’s con man character telling a cop about a job that results in a huge explosion and lots of deaths. He says the mastermind behind the job is a man named Keyser Soze. At the end of the movie, we learn that Kevin Spacey is Keyser Soze, and a good number of details from the story that he told the police were made up from things he observed in the cop’s office.

The first thing your brain does after it picks itself up off the floor is get confused: Wait—if he made up those details, what other bits of information did he make up? Was anything he just told us real? Is Keyser Soze even real?

And just like that, the movie that was so straightforward for the first 100 minutes is suddenly a completely different movie.

The Importance of Positive Self-Talk for Writers

by Guest Blogger | 71 Comments

If we’re not careful, the negative thoughts in our minds can outnumber the positive ones. It’s a downward spiral no one likes riding. Hard to dismount.

Simple affirmations help. I love post-it notes. Paper ones, or the computer apps that supply them.