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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You’ve spent a few agonizing weeks waiting on the feedback to roll in from your beta readers. You’ve probably worked your way into an anxiety attack with all the waiting. What if they don’t like it? What if you have to do a major rewrite? It’s scary!
In this post, I’ll walk you through exactly what to do with all that beta reader feedback. Take a deep breath—it’ll be great.
Fear, anticipation, and self-doubt are just a few emotions I felt during my first writing contest. Maybe you’re in the same place now. Wondering if you have a chance among the many entrants. Uncertain if it’s worth the time and effort.
Short answer—it is. And that holds true whether you win or lose.
But I also want to reveal five tips for improving your winning chances in a writing contest. See, I won the Short Fiction Break 2020 Summer Writing Contest with my story Dark Time. Here’s how.
Before we talk about the concept of constrained writing and tell you how it works, let me ask you this: Have you ever opened a new blank document to write, stared at it for far too long, and then realized you have no ideas, that your mind is as blank as the page you’re trying to write on? What if you could double or triple the number of ideas you have, not by doing something extra but by taking something away?
That’s what constrained writing is about: taking away options so that you can actually be more creative.
What’s the most fun you can have with writing? It starts with brilliant inspiration for a story you love. Even better if you’re surrounded by other writers offering suggestions and cheering you on. Top it off with guaranteed publication just a few weeks after you pick up your pen, and you’re basically living the writer’s dream.
The best part? This isn’t just a dream. This is how we design every writing contest here at The Write Practice.
We want to pack the most fun possible into our writing contests, so you finish with a short story you love, a writing community that inspires you, a publication credit, and a reinvigorated passion for your writing.
And we’re about to do it all again this fall. That’s right: the Fall Writing Contest is now open!
It might seem like a monumental task to find a group of people willing to volunteer to read your manuscript and give you good feedback. Luckily, it’s actually not. Most people are more than willing to give you a little help. And when you follow a few simple steps, they’ll be able to give you invaluable feedback.
In the movies, inspiration strikes the writer, and then a montage of the writer banging away on his or her chosen instrument flashes by, ending with a completed masterpiece that shares the writer’s soul with the world. Sadly, the reality is not like the movies. Sometimes the stories rip through your fingers like your hands are possessed; but more often, putting a story into words feels like yanking your teeth out of your head. It’s all too easy to get stuck in writer’s block.
When that happens, there’s nothing more we want to do than give up on the story and start over. But we can’t. We have to push through and finish it.
There are so many editing tools out there these days, it’s hard to keep track of the best ones. Two editing software solutions you may have heard of are WhiteSmoke and Grammarly.
In this article, we’ll compare the two options and see which is the best choice for you.
Have you ever faced this kind of issue? You have a scene goal in mind, you know the characters involved, where they are and what they want, but HOW does the scene play out? What exactly happens to bring the characters from Point A to Point B in the story?
That’s when the power of improv might come in handy.
“I’m a teenager. Am I too young to write a book?”
I get this question a lot. The answer is no, you’re not too young to write.
The fact is most writers wish they had started younger. If you can string sentences together, you can write.
Can you steal ideas from other stories? What if someone steals your ideas? In fact, are your ideas even good enough at all? If you’ve ever asked questions like these, I have good news for you.
