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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Oh, relative pronouns. You crazy, crazy kids. You can cause so much frustration with your misplaced thats, whos, and whichs. Let’s have a chat and sort you all out, shall we?
Let’s say you’re telling a story about Weston, a neurologist with a bionic elbow. When do you use which relative pronoun?
In honor of this writer’s birthday (and birthday obsession), here are three birthday-inspired writing prompts.
Looking for a way to achieve an edge that will raise your writing to the top of an agent’s or editor’s inbox? Dreaming that your pitches, cover letters, query letters, and actual prose will stand out and be noticed? Just want to be taken more seriously as a writer?
It’s a lot easier than you think.
I have read The Memoir Project three times. I have taken notes and underlined my favorite sections. Marion Roach Smith has solid advice on how to write your own stories. Let me share nineteen tips on writing memoir from The Memoir Project.
Characters are one of the most important elements of any story. And character development can be challenging to get right.
Characters are critical for drawing readers into a story. They should also be the force that pushes your plot forward. A strong character can bring the story’s entire world to life. They can make your readers cry and even feel like a real friend. A weak one can deflate an entire book like a leaky air mattress.
The end of the year can be strange for word-lovers. If you’re anything like me, your last “365” had great writing days and not-so-great ones. There were days when the muse sang and days when her only appearance was to say she didn’t exist. (And never had. Or never would again. You know how capricious the muse is.)
Well, screw that capricious muse. It’s time to take a stand. I’m calling all you word-lovers to take a step with me: it’s time to call yourself a writer.
We’re tackling one of the less obvious grammatical foibles today. Did you know that there is a difference between lay and lie? Because there is! Let’s explore.
Other than the definition of “to tell an untruth,” lay and lie are often used interchangeably. But lay is a transitive verb, meaning it requires a subject and one or more objects. Lie, on the other hand, is an intransitive verb, which means that it doesn’t need an object.
So if you wanted to say that you (the subject) lay on the floor (the object) in the fetal position all day yesterday, that’s correct. If you said that you lay in said position all day regularly, that would be wrong.
We use email every day. For work. For fun. For love letters.
It’s so easy. The standards are so low. Even at work—the standards are lower than other forms of communication.
But you’re a writer. And as a writer, you have the unique ability to make your emails stand out among the masses. You are capable of crafting the perfect email.
In a world where you can send a message in a few minutes with email, twitter, snapchat, or the latest popular way to contact a friend in another city, state, or continent, a letter posted though the mail carries a wonderful appeal.
They say a picture’s worth a thousand words, but can you get even more words out of one? What about two-thousand? A whole novel? It’s all up to you. But I do have three tips for you to find writing inspiration, as well as five images you can use to spark your creativity.
