September marks the beginning of a new school year for many students around the U.S. New supplies, new goals, and a new opportunity to kick-start your writing habits! Here are 30 September writing prompts to get you started!
Here to learn? You’re in the WRITE place!
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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How to Write a Scene: The Definitive Guide to Scene Structure
Once you have a great story idea, the next step is to write it. But do you want to take your brilliant idea and then write a book that bores readers and causes them to quit reading your book?
Of course not. That’s why you need to learn how to write great scenes.
Scenes are the basic building block of all storytelling. How do you actually write them, though? And even more, how do you write the kind of scenes that both can keep readers hooked while also building to the powerful climax you have planned for later in the story?
In this post, you’ll learn what a scene actually is. You’ll explore the six elements every scene needs for it to move the story forward. Then, you’ll learn how to do the work of actually putting a scene together, step-by-step. We’ll look at some of the main scene types you need for the various types of stories, and we’ll also look at some scene examples so you can better understand how scenes work. Finally, we’ll put it all together with a practice exercise.
Inkitt Review: How I Found a Whole New Audience for My Novella
Inkitt allows authors to publish stories for free on their site, and if your story connects, it can get picked up by Galatea—Inkitt’s reader app with a much wider (and more mobile-first) audience. Galatea adapts stories into serialized episodes with sound effects, pacing adjustments, and artwork, then promotes them on the app. That’s what happened with my short story, and it’s still wild to see it playing out on a professional platform like that.
The Secret Every Frustrated Writer Needs to Know
Are you frustrated with your writing? Tired of writing words you know aren’t as good as you want them to be? Frustrated writer, I know why.
A weird thing happens when we finally sit down to write The Book: we expect it to come out as magnificently as we think it should. We see or feel what it should be, and hey—we’ve read and written stuff all our lives, right? It should just come out!
But it doesn’t.
This is normal.
10 Memoir Writing Prompts to Get Your Life Story Started
Want to write a memoir but not sure how to get started? I’ve got you covered. In this post, I’m sharing my ten best creative writing prompts for memoir writers.
Write a Great Memoir: How to Start (and Actually Finish) Your First Draft
What does it take to write a memoir? Not just any memoir—a great memoir, one that people love and talk about and share with their friends?
In this guide, I want to talk about how you can start writing your memoir, how you can actually finish it, and how you can make sure it’s good.
If you read this article from start to finish, it will save you hundreds of hours and result in a much better finished memoir.
How to Unlock the Power of the Present Tense in Memoir
Memoir is about something that happened in the past. You can write the story in the past tense. Or you can write the story in the present tense, as though it is happening now.
There is power in the present tense. Have you considered using it as you write about the past?
ProWritingAid Review: Manuscript Analysis and Virtual Beta Reader
ProWritingAid has always been a great tool for catching my spelling and grammar mistakes, but I was curious: could it handle bigger-picture problems like plot holes and character inconsistencies? And if so, how accurate would it be? I tested both features on the first draft of my novel, and here are my honest thoughts.
What Is Plot? The 6 Elements of Plot and How to Use Them
Plot has a specific structure. It follows a format that sucks readers in; introduces characters and character development at a pace guaranteed to create fans; and compels readers to keep reading in order to satisfy conflict and answer questions.
Do you want readers to love your story? (Who doesn’t, am I right?) Then you need to understand plot.
How to Submit Short Stories: 10 Easy Steps to Go From Writing to Published
How do you submit a short story for publication? It’s a lot to think about and I’ve seen more than one writer throw in the towel and say they’re happy to just be writing. To make it easier, there are ten steps you can take to tackle short story submissions.
It may seem overwhelming, but once you know what you’re doing, getting short stories published isn’t as scary as it seems.
In this article, you’ll learn the ten steps needed to submit a short story for submission and hopefully get it published.
