by J. D. Edwin |
Have you ever heard what people tell kids who want to play sports? Practice. Did you grow up with music lessons? You’ve probably heard the same thing. Keep practicing.
But can you apply the same philosophy to writing?
Not only is practicing writing a good way to improve your writing skills—it’s essential to becoming a better writer.
And like all honed skills, you need a good teacher or guide to push you—to help you practice. In this post, you’ll not only learn four steps to help you practice, but exercises to improve your writing skills along the way.
by Sarah Gribble |
You might think you don’t need to do much research because you’re writing fiction. (Isn’t fiction just making stuff up?!) You’d be wrong.
Your readers expect to be transported to your setting and to understand your characters so fully, they seem like real people. Little things like using the wrong jargon or having your main character wear the wrong type of bodice can jar your reader out of the story and cause them to lose respect for you as a writer. If they can’t trust you to get the facts right, why should they trust you to guide them through a story?
Like it or not, research is a writer’s best friend. (Next to caffeine, anyway.) So let’s talk about how to conduct research for a book.
by Joslyn Chase |
Do you love a good cliffhanger? Most readers do. Whether they entail a twist that hits us like a tidal wave or employ a more subtle revelation, cliffhangers keep readers eagerly turning the pages—even if we’re not all entirely sure of a cliffhanger’s meaning.
But what is the definition of cliffhanger? And how can we, as writers, master the use of cliffhangers to write a book that holds readers all the way to the very end?
In this article, we’ll dig deep into what a real cliffhanger is, what it does, and how you can create consistently potent cliffhangers in your own writing.
by J. D. Edwin |
What should be included in your first draft? Writing the first draft of a book is incredibly difficult. So much so that many writers don’t even finish their first draft. Why is this? And how can we prevent this from stopping us from writing our first drafts?
Every writer who has ever written a book wrote a first draft for that story—and it’s highly unlikely that the first draft was also the final draft.
Of course, it’s hard to remember this when you’re reading a published book. Writers don’t often see the first, or even second (maybe more!) drafts of a book. Just the final product.
However, behind every great story there is a beginning—and in every beginning there are elements we, as writers, need to care about accomplishing. There are also elements that will only hold us back.
In this post, I will cover the three elements you need to include in your first draft, and the three elements that will only slow down or stop your writing process.
by Sarah Gribble |
Some of you may be participating in our 100 Day Book program, writing your first novel on your own, or kicking around the idea of starting that manuscript.
Writing your first novel is hard. It’s a struggle. It’s a learning process.
And it’s often autobiographical, even if you don’t mean it to be. And that’s okay.
