Adding an animal to your story can reveal a lot about the humans who inhabit your world. Whether a beloved pet or a rogue turkey, adding an animal encounter to a scene is surprisingly humanizing.
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.
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.
Evelyn Puerto on How to Write Great Dialogue in a Story
Writing dialogue boils down to one big rule: Make it sound realistic.
You not only communicate every day (unless you’re on a really heavy writing binge), but you hear other people communicating. Dialogue is all around us. Constantly. Sometimes too constantly. The TV blares it. Your favorite novel is full of it. Your family squawks it over dinner.
Inherently, you know how to write dialogue. Sometimes you just have to get out of your own way in order to get it on paper.
How to Make a Character Take a Stand: Hamody Jasim
What do your characters believe in so strongly, they’re willing to die for it? What are you willing to die for?
For most of us, this isn’t a question we’re faced with every day. But Hamody Jasim was in his teens when he realized that fighting for what he believed probably meant dying for it—and he chose to enter the fight anyway. In this episode of Character Test, I talk with Hamody about some of the highest-stakes choices of his life and how he came to make them.
How to Build Tension in a Scene: 3 Nail-Biting Ways
Great fiction is built around tension. The bad news is, we experience tension in our own lives every day. The good news is, it’s great fuel for our stories. The question is, how do you create that experience for your readers by building tension in your scenes?
Gayle Woodson on Why Hybrid Publishing Might Be Right For You
The point of writing, for most people, is to share that writing with the world. The problem is getting your writing into the hands of readers can be such an intimidating and confusing process that a lot of writers simply give up. This month’s interviewee talks about one option for sharing your writing: working with hybrid publishers.
5 Ways to Ruin Your Creative Writing
Consider this: as writers, we employ words.
We harness their power and send them out to do a job. So, just like any productive employer, we must choose our operatives effectively and manage them well.
In this article, we’ll take a look at some of the ways words can fail and how to avoid that.
5 Essential Hero’s Journey Symbolic Archetypes (And 4 Bonus Archetypes)
Symbols enrich your story’s meaning by connecting what’s literally happening with overarching themes. Does your story include symbols? And what symbols should you include? In this article, we’ll look at symbolic archetypes that will help you create powerful symbols in your story.
How to Choose a Domain Name for Your Writer Website
Building a website for your writing is the first step to becoming a professional writer. But how do you choose the right domain name for your writer website? Read on to find out.
Writing Priorities: Forget Balance in Your Writing and Do This One Thing Instead
Three different people have asked me in the last month about how to balance their writing, work, family, and life. Step 1: ask someone who actually knows. I’m too busy coordinating home repairs while my spouse travels for work. New water heater this week. Broken window replaced last week.
But I realized dealing with a broken water heater is actually a perfect example of how to manage multiple areas of your life while you keep writing. Hint: it has nothing to do with balance.
One Secret Therapists Know That Will Transform Your Character Development
Have you ever known someone who just made you feel crazy? Like the normal rules of conversation—and especially conflict—don’t apply? Or have the characters in your stories ever felt that way, surrounded by drama they don’t know how to navigate?
Statistically speaking, 16% of people have a personality disorder. But what is a personality disorder? And how can you improve your character development by learning about them?
