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.
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My mother seems to appreciate having a grammar lover in the family. For Christmas one year, she bought me the book I Judge You When You Use Poor Grammar. (By the way, it is equally correct to say “bad grammar.”) Last week, my mother emailed to ask if she was using the word “nor” correctly, which brings me to today’s post: the use of either, neither, and the connecting words that go with them.
Knowing how to write a short story seems like it’s a no-brainer. They’re short; how hard could it be? However, once you start writing a short story you’ll probably realize that you don’t know how to write a short story. You’d like to some short story tips.
A novel has hundreds of pages to get you involved in the characters’ lives and to transform you to another world, all to leave you with a great ending that you’re thinking about weeks—maybe even years—later.
In a short story, you have to do all that in a few pages. It’s no wonder most of the “new” writers I know would rather write novels. Short stories may be small, but they are mighty. (Not to mention they are a great way to keep up a writing habit.)
Chances are your favorite author started their writing career by writing short stories. Big names and favorite writers like Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, Ray Bradbury, Kurt Vonnegut, Shirley Jackson, Louisa May Alcott, Sylvia Plath are all short story writers.
I’ve talked about coming up with ideas, plotting, and some key elements of short stories. Now it’s time to stop dilly-dallying and get to writing. This article covers three successful short story tips and strategies to write a short story.
Several scenarios might require you to write about yourself from personal essays to job applications and biography blurbs.
The key for each is to think about the purpose and the target audience. Then shape your personal history or life experience into a well-crafted piece of writing that meets those needs of purpose and audience.
Let’s look at a few of the most common scenarios where you have to write about yourself.
Have you ever started a story, gotten halfway through, and realized you don’t know key facts about your story’s world? Have you ever wondered how to find out the size of spoons in Medieval England for your fantasy adventure story? Is that even relevant to your plot, or could you skip that fact? Here’s how to do research for your story.
Margaret Atwood is perhaps best-known for her novel The Handmaid’s Tale. In her MasterClass, she’ll teach you how she wrote it. Will the class help you become a better writer? We took it to find out.
If you saw the words “expository essay” on a writing assignment, would your mind draw a blank? Would you immediately feel as if you had stumbled into unexplored territory?
Well there’s good news.
You might not realize it, but chances are this is not your first encounter with this type of essay. Once you have been writing essays in academic environments, you have probably already worked on expository writing.
In this article, I hope to help you recognize this essay type and understand the expository essay outline. Comprehending the building blocks is instrumental in knowing how to construct an exceptional expository essay.
How do you write a best-selling novel or an award-winning screenplay? You might say, great writing or unique characters or thrilling conflict. But so much of writing a great story is knowing and mastering the type of story you’re trying to tell.
What are the types of stories? And how do you use them to tell a great story?
In this article, we’re going to cover the nine types of stories, share which tend to become best-sellers, and share the hidden values that help you master each type.
But first, what do I mean by “types of stories”?
Persuasive essays can be challenging for several reasons, but the first problem is choosing the right topic.
You want a topic that is both engaging and controversial enough to elicit a strong response. A topic that’s too broad may lead to a lack of focus, while one that’s too narrow might not provide enough material to argue convincingly.
Let’s look at 25 persuasive essay prompts.
If you’ve ever wanted to write a book, you might have heard the term “beta readers.” But what are beta readers? Do you really need them? Are they just free editing, or something different?
A couple hints: yes, if you’re going to publish a book, you need beta readers. And no, they’re not a replacement for hiring a professional editor.
English is full of homophones, words that sound the same but mean different things. Often, they are spelled differently. Everyone is aware of the problems with there, there, there; too, too, two; and carat, caret, carrot. (Well, maybe not that last one so much.)
Forward and Foreword are two more homophones that cause problems. So, let’s take a look at them.
