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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What do readers demand from the stories they read? They expect to be entertained, to learn something, to be intellectually challenged, charmed, or tickled. Readers want to have questions raised and answered and they love action, chases, and puzzles. But above all, readers read to feel something, to be stirred emotionally.
That’s why learning to craft an emotion-baited hook can be one of the most powerful tools in your toolbox. So let’s take a look at how to do that.
Have you ever doubted your skill, your talent, your ability to write great stories? Self-doubt is a normal (if frustrating!) part of the writing process. If you focus on that doubt, you’ll become too discouraged to create—so bestselling author Rea Frey found a bold way to overcome doubt and write.
As writers, we create new realities, which demands we use our experiences to inform our work. A stroll with a friend in a park or a dance in a fountain will translate into chapters.
We don’t just have to grab the good times. We can do this with illness as well. When we are sick, we should try and take a step back and learn about how our characters will feel when they are struck with a disease.
Monday was Labor Day here in the States, and it got me thinking of the adage “Don’t wear white after Labor Day.” It’s perfect fodder for a writing prompt. Don’t see it yet? Stick with me.
What’s the purpose of your life? It’s a question we’ve all asked in one way or another, probably over and over again. It’s easy to focus on the appeal of the next exciting thing. But what if the secret to finding your purpose lies in less?
Inspiration comes in many forms. It may be a lovely tune from your playlist; A stunning vista in nature; A wildly creative turn-of-phrase you overhear in a coffee shop. Nearly anything. Like all creative minds, you sit down to convert this nugget of inspiration into a story.
But then you hit a wall. How do you transform raw inspiration into an actual story? How do you turn inspiration into a novel plan?
Is the writer’s life really a whirlwind of creative highs, writer’s block, thrilling projects, and missed deadlines? We know what we think it means to be a professional author. But Kevin J. Anderson wants to change that perception.
Characters show us who they are when they are under stress. One way to create stress for a character and deepen their characterization is to inflict a minor injury. How will they respond? Will their reaction affirm who they present themselves to be? Or will it reveal perhaps another dimension of their personality?
Writing a book with a cowriter can be an awesome experience. But cowriting a book can also spiral into a frustrating mess and an abandoned project if you’re not prepared. How do you know whether you should cowrite a book? And then how do you cowrite a book?
A high school pottery teacher split his class in half. To one half he told them they only had to produce one perfect pot by the end of the semester and they would get an A. He turned to the other class. They had to produced fifty pounds of pots by the end of the semester. It didn’t matter whether the pots they made were good or not. They had to be pots and there had to be fifty pounds of them.
By the end of the year, who do you think produced the best pot?
It’s really a question of what makes better work, quality or quantity?
