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.
And make sure to subscribe to get a weekly digest of our latest posts, along with our free guide, 10 Steps to Become a Writer.
You love to write. People have told you you’re good at it, and you sense they’re right.
But writing is one thing. Writing for a living is another. How do you know the time is right, or whether you really have what it takes?
You’d better be certain you know what you’re getting yourself into before you take the leap. Full-time writing is no hobby. And it’s not easy. But if you’re called to it—oh, the rewards.
Everyone loves a success story, especially when it results from years of hard work and the protagonist has struggled from the depths of despair. This story type is so beloved, that it is Charles Booker’s second plot type of seven: Rags to Riches.
My roommate and I spent a good chunk of Sunday evening watching Avatar on FX since neither of us had seen it, and it was apparently a huge deal when I was out of the country for eleven months. As we were watching, I said to her, “This is kind of like Pocahontas meets Fern Gully, but with sex.” She agreed, which got me thinking about the fact that a lot of our literature, television, and film is similar.
Christopher Booker had the same idea in 2004, and wrote The Seven Basic Plots, which argues that all stories told in any medium can be categorized into one of seven archetypes. Today, we’re covering the first plot: Overcoming the Monster.
If anxiety, boredom, overwhelm, or (ahem) listlessness have paralyzed your creative work, here’s a quick writing exercise to get you going again: 1. Make a list. 2. Repeat.
When I tackled writing my first mystery two years ago, I was shocked at how different the process was from writing a general thriller. Even though I’d already published six novels, I was surprised at how much preparation and planning writing a detective story took.
If you’re thinking of writing a mystery, here are six things I had to learn I wish someone had told me.
You’ve written some stories, maybe even published a book or two. You dream of being a successful author. But how much do you want it? What does it take to be a writer?
As a writer, I’m sure you know the importance of a good grammar checker. Sure, the old Word spellcheck feature is great for a tenth-grade English paper, but for professional writers, you’ll want something with more power—especially if you’re publishing a book.
Two popular options are Grammarly and Ginger. Each of these grammar checking tools has some unique and useful features that can help you write with confidence and catch and correct errors along the way.
Is Grammarly or Ginger right for you? Read on to find out.
You want to become a writer, but you’re not sure how to stay disciplined. But now that it’s 2020, you’re ready to commit and focus on your writing (or refocus). Where do you start?
Well, that’s where our 7 Day Creative Writing Challenge comes in!
Many of us are lucky to have people around us who understand or at least support our writing habits and dreams. But even with the best support, sometimes it feels like my writing is silly in the face of so many other pressing world problems. How do you keep writing when it seems inconsequential?
This week, it was our goal to get Sarah Gribble’s debut novel, Surviving Death, into the #1 bestselling spot in its category on Amazon. We worked hard for it, came so close, and just narrowly missed. In this post, I want to share what we did to get so close and why we missed, and talk about whether it really matters.
