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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Almost any genre you might write in will include some kind of action scene, so it makes sense to learn how to do action well. Action does not always mean a car chase or a shootout, though these are time-honored examples. An action scene can simply be a place in the story where the pacing increases and the movement is external, rather than internal.
I’ve had some additional duties this year that have required me to add speech writing to my list of skills. I didn’t realize how much it would improve my writing in general. Even if you run in fear of public speaking (you’re in good company—95% of adults say it’s their number one fear), try these techniques and see if speech writing helps your writing too!
Writing fiction with paranormal elements can be tricky, especially in a modern setting. You want your readers to suspend their disbelief and just go with the story. You don’t want them to roll their eyes because the concept of your paranormal world is too far-fetched. Today we’re talking with paranormal romance writer M MacKinnon to get her take on writing paranormal fiction.
Our job as writers is to transport our readers into our stories. A high-octane plot and three-dimensional characters are obviously necessary to accomplish this goal, but so is an immersive setting.
Setting is often overlooked when describing a scene. We all want to move on to the next plot twist and wasting important space on what trees look like will just bore the readers, right?
Wrong.
To draw readers fully into a scene, we need setting. We want them to forget they’re reading and make them experience everything our characters are experiencing.
Sometimes, you can get away with building your setting straight from your imagination. Sometimes, you can’t.
Have you ever come across a line of poetry that was so clear, you could taste the description as you read it? Or a paragraph in a novel that made your skin tingle from the tangibility of it? That kind of vivid description is powerful and hard to capture, but I’ve found that there is one key trick to help you get started.
I'm in the middle of writing my latest novel and I hate my writing. Loathe it, in fact. I don't want to come back to it on a daily basis. At this point, I'd rather just abandon the project or start over from scratch. Have you ever felt this way? I'm betting you have....
Nobody likes writing the middle of a story. Not only is the middle of a story the part where writers usually quit, it’s the part where readers quit too! The middle of a story can often feel unfocused, slow, or predictable. Sometimes even published and respected stories can feel like they lose their sense of direction and purpose in the middle.
But your story needs to be told. You need to start and finish it with confidence. And the way to write an amazing, page-turning middle to your book lies in answering three essential questions.
How do you write when you don’t have time to write? When your life is full and busy with job, school, family, and other obligations, it can be tough to squeeze in writing. But don’t give up—there are ways to keep writing even if you don’t have time to sit down with a pen and paper.
Opening scenes are just hard. Figure out how to start a story right and you capture the reader, set the tone, and propel the story forward. Do it wrong, and you risk losing a reader. Here’s one opening to avoid: the empty stage setting.
How many times have you heard someone say a character in a movie or book felt “flat” or cliché? As writers, we want to create strong characters our readers will fall in love with. We don’t want readers to be bored or roll their eyes at the people we’ve created. Today we’re talking with romance author Callie Sutcliffe on how to develop characters readers care about.
