New Daily Writing Guides from The Write Practice

How to Write a Character Who is Nothing Like You

A couple of months ago I attended a reading and book signing with Terry McMillan, the best selling author of Waiting to Exhale. She discussed her upcoming book, Who Asked You?, which contains fifteen different points of view, including one of an eight-year-old boy. With that many POVs, there was no way ALL the characters could be autobiographical, so during the question and answer period I asked her—how did she get in the minds of characters so unlike herself?

Her answer can be boiled down to the following: you must (1) empathize, (2) listen to those around you, and (3) fill out a job application on behalf of your character.

4 Ways Childhood Reading Shapes Your Writing

by Carlos Cooper | 41 Comments

I’ve always loved reading. As a kid, I’d get lost for days in stories that swept me away to distance lands or plunged me into a murky abyss.

It wasn’t until much later that I realized how pivotal those books were in molding me into the writer I am today. Let’s look at four ways reading has shaped our work.

Choose Your Form Wisely

by Sophie Novak | 31 Comments

It seems one of the most neglected considerations in writing is form. Everything else screams for more attention: chosen topic(s), subtheme(s), genre, characters, plot, voice, style. As for form itself, the decision usually goes along the lines of choosing whether to be a short story, a poem, a play or a novel. From there on, you’re supposedly not to think much about it, except how to structure the plot and cliff-hangers in the whole story.

Rather than following familiar schemes, you can experiment and find your own specific way. In this age of radical change, form can also be a widely explored phenomenon.

Timeless Writing Doesn’t Have to Be Super Complicated

by Guest Blogger | 23 Comments

Are there times when you want to write something different; to create something special and lasting that readers will find important?
Now, you know as well as I writing something timeless isn’t as easy. I was recently inspired by a book called A Grand Complication: The Race to Build the World’s Most Legendary Watch, by Stacy Perman, a fascinating book about watchmaking and collecting in the early 20th century.

After reading the book, I was struck by the many lessons fine watchmaking can teach about writing. Here are 3 of my favorites.

Why Ender’s Game Works (And Why The Rest of the Series Doesn’t)

by Joe Bunting | 29 Comments

If I can, I always like to read the book before I watch the film adaptation, and so last week, I picked up the science fiction classic Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. I enjoyed the action-packed novel enough to read the second and third books in the series and found them to be troubled for the opposite reasons Ender’s Game was great.

If you’ve seen the film Ender’s Game (or are planning to) here’s what makes the book worth reading, and what you can learn about it and the mistakes of the rest of the series.

How to Cope with All the Waiting You’ll Do As a Writer

by Guest Blogger | 37 Comments

Sometimes, the hardest part of writing is the time spent not writing. Can anything good possibly come from waiting? Time is money, right? A precious resource?

If you think about it, the process of writing is pockmarked with periods of waiting. Long, interminable periods of waiting. You wait for ideas to strike. You wait for time to write. You wait for your browser to load your Web history full of research. You wait (sometimes a long, long time) on your brain, to make the connections your characters need to get from Act I to Act III.

Once your long wait is over, and you have a completed work in your hands, read, re-read, edited, revised, proofed and ready to make its way through the creeks and streams of the publishing world to an agent, a publisher, a contest or a magazine. You send it off, breathe a sigh of relief, and you wait. And wait. And wait some more.

How can we make sure the time spent waiting isn’t wasted?

Hyperbole and Adynaton

by Liz Bureman | 26 Comments

I did it. After months of anticipation, it finally happened. This past Sunday night, I watched Sharknado.

Most of you are probably familiar with Sharknado, but if you’re not, get out from under that rock and go look it up on Wikipedia. It’s a SyFy original movie, and the only really important thing you need to know is that a guy chainsaws a shark in half. From the inside. It’s amazing. It’s probably the greatest made-for-TV movie that I’ve ever seen in my life, and I’m not using that much hyperbole.

What’s hyperbole, you ask? Great question.

Are You In A Complicated Relationship With Your Characters?

by Devin Berglund | 25 Comments

I sat at the computer rubbing my brow. I’d written at least 60,000 words in my work in progress so far and my main character was still giving me a hard time. Others were having temper tantrums, standing in the shadowed corner of my mind with their arms crossed.

No matter what I did, they wouldn’t speak to me and they wouldn’t move from the shadows.

Are You Personalizing the Inanimate Objects In Your Story?

by Marianne Richmond | 52 Comments

I just finished my newest children’s book called I’ll Never Let You Go. It’s the story of Edward (a bear) and his best friend Blankie, a fuzzy blue fabric scrap. Yep, Blankie is as real as any human friend with emotions and idiosyncrasies to match. Cuddly, thoughtful, kind, protective… and afraid of thunderstorms.

Climaxes and Anticlimaxes

by Liz Bureman | 7 Comments

We’re all familiar with the term climax in reference to the point of a story where the action has reached its peak, the conflict is at its tensest, and the rest of the plot is a movement towards the resolution.

But did you know that climax also is a figure of speech that you can use in your storytelling?

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