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 do you live “a writer’s life”? By writing! (And editing, and publishing, and marketing. But we’ll get to that.)
But sometimes (okay a lot of the time) it’s hard to fit writing into our busy, busy lives. Kids, school, work, house maintenance, relationships . . . We’re pulled in a million directions every day.
The key to fitting in anything important is to find the time and protect that time.
Have you ever tried to have a conversation with someone who mumbles his responses, doesn’t make eye contact, and slouches in his chair? You have to work hard at it, and it’s often unrewarding.
Isn’t it easier to talk with someone who sits up and gives you his attention, looks right at you, and speaks his answers clearly? It requires less effort on your part and is primed to yield results.
Weak writing is like that first guy. It makes it harder for readers to follow the story and doesn’t hold out much hope for a satisfying experience. It’s tempting for readers to close the book and move on.
Strong writing commands attention and respect, setting up the expectation of a good story to come.
Ever wonder how to come up with story ideas? Ask any writer and invariably they will tell you “life.”
A writer’s greatest source of ideas comes from their real-life experiences. From going to the grocery store to careening down a snowy mountain, real life is every writer’s inspiration. You just need to look and you’ll find a story.
Since 2011, we’ve been helping writers publish their books and accomplish their writing goals. We’ve worked with thousands of writers through our community and courses. But this year, we wanted to take a step back and ask, is what we’re doing actually making a difference? Are we actually helping writers achieve their dreams?
And so we went back to our students and asked, what did you accomplish in 2019? What books did you publish, and what role did The Write Practice play in helping you?
The responses were inspiring. Here’s what our authors have published in the last year.
As a writer, a good proofreading software is the Robin to your Batman. How else will you know when you’ve used a semicolon in the right spot?
There are so many options out there for proofreading tools, it can be hard to keep track of what you should use. Sure, there are some free options available and they pick up the basics, but if they were good enough for writers, the premium options wouldn’t exist. In this article, I’ll compare four top options so you can find the one that’s best for you.
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.Â
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.
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.
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?
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.
