New Daily Writing Guides from The Write Practice

Dramatic Irony: A Great Literary Device That Adds Suspense to Your Story

Do you remember the first time you read Romeo and Juliet? Did you cringe when Romeo kills himself, knowing that Juliet is still alive? This is a perfect example of how to use dramatic irony in your story—a literary device that will inevitably add suspense into your novel.

Dramatic irony can be used in any story regardless of genre, but it is especially useful when writing stories that you want to increase tension and suspense.

In this article, you’ll learn about dramatic irony, another useful technique that keeps readers on the edge of their seats.

16 Story Ideas to Change The World

by Kellie McGann and Elizabeth Nettleton | 20 Comments

Recently Joe asked me to be the World Impact Director for The Write Practice—a fancy title for making sure we stay involved in helping writers across the globe. Details of our first project will be coming soon, but until then, I wanted to share with you a few other ways I believe our writing can change the world, starting with these sixteen story ideas for world-changing writers.

Why We Stop Writing: 3 Lies Writers Need to Stop Believing

by Guest Blogger | 2 Comments

How many articles, blogs, or books have you failed to write? Or have you ever started one of these projects and then hit a hard halt? Are you stumped at why you stopped writing?

Eighty percent of the time writers stop writing is because of three lies they tell themselves.

Knowing what these lies are will help you notice them creeping into your writing process, which is the first step to preventing them from convincing you to quit writing.

How to Maximize the Power of Cause and Effect in Your Stories

by Joslyn Chase | 0 Comments

One reason some stories feel flat is because they are missing the cause and effect story elements that push life (and narratives!) forward. How can you maximize cause and effect in your stories?

How to Keep Writing After Failure

by David Safford | 0 Comments

Writing a great story is hard. Every author worth his or her salt knows this from painful experience. And if you’re setting out to write something worthwhile, you’re going to encounter failure along the way. But that doesn’t mean you’re a failed writer.

Despite the temptation to give up or run away from writing again, you have to keep going. You have to keep writing.

Because the reward waiting for you is priceless. Not only that, the reward can only come from failure.

And it’s the ingredient that will make your story a must-read.

My AI-Assisted Writing Experiment: What Happened (and What I Learned).

by Jamie Biggs | 0 Comments

There’s a growing divide in the writing world right now. On one side, you have authors excited about experimenting with AI. On the other, you have traditional writers who want nothing to do with it. The conversations can get heated fast, and often it feels like there’s no middle ground.

I wanted to know if there was room for compromise. Could AI help with speed while I protected the heart of the story? Could it serve as a tool instead of a replacement?

Kinesthesia: Definition and Examples for Writers

by Liz Bureman | 21 Comments

It’s kind of fun when words that refer to literary techniques have their origin in other disciplines. Take kinesiology, for example. I had several friends in college who were kinesiology majors, which means that they studied the science of human movement. That general idea of movement is also reflected in today’s new literary word: kinesthesia.

30 September Writing Prompts

by Sue Weems | 0 Comments

September marks the beginning of a new school year for many students around the U.S. New supplies, new goals, and a new opportunity to kick-start your writing habits! Here are 30 September writing prompts to get you started!

How to Write a Scene: The Definitive Guide to Scene Structure

by Joe Bunting | 3 Comments

Once you have a great story idea, the next step is to write it. But do you want to take your brilliant idea and then write a book that bores readers and causes them to quit reading your book?

Of course not. That’s why you need to learn how to write great scenes.

Scenes are the basic building block of all storytelling. How do you actually write them, though? And even more, how do you write the kind of scenes that both can keep readers hooked while also building to the powerful climax you have planned for later in the story?

In this post, you’ll learn what a scene actually is. You’ll explore the six elements every scene needs for it to move the story forward. Then, you’ll learn how to do the work of actually putting a scene together, step-by-step. We’ll look at some of the main scene types you need for the various types of stories, and we’ll also look at some scene examples so you can better understand how scenes work. Finally, we’ll put it all together with a practice exercise.

Inkitt Review: How I Found a Whole New Audience for My Novella

by Jamie Biggs | 1 Comment

Inkitt allows authors to publish stories for free on their site, and if your story connects, it can get picked up by Galatea—Inkitt’s reader app with a much wider (and more mobile-first) audience. Galatea adapts stories into serialized episodes with sound effects, pacing adjustments, and artwork, then promotes them on the app. That’s what happened with my short story, and it’s still wild to see it playing out on a professional platform like that.

Here to learn? You’re in the WRITE place!