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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Do you listen to music? What are the songs you keep coming back to savor, over and over again, no matter how “dated” they may be? Whatever your musical taste, there’s a reason to plug in those headphones (or turn on that hot new stereo system you just bought): music enriches your writing.
I’d go so far as to say the ultimate muse is music.
How long does it take you to write a sentence? Or a paragraph?
If you’re like me, you start writing a sentence, pause after a few words, stare at your computer without typing, write a few more words, pause, look around, write a few more words, pause, write, pause, write. Five minutes later, you finally finish writing that one sentence, but then you have to re-read the sentence you just typed and edit it for mistakes for another five minutes.
Perhaps there’s a way to write faster, with more joy and fewer pauses.
Writers research like fiends for their magazine features, novels, and how-to books. We often feel the need to travel great distances to get the facts right when we are wending a story. Writers seek grants, chunks of time away from family, vacation time from day jobs, and retreats, thinking where they are, living their routine lives, adds nothing to the spice they seek for a good tale.
However, sometimes we get the best details just going outside and sitting in the rain.
The other day I learned some exciting news. Beasts of No Nation—a novel written by my friend Uzo Iweala—is going to become a movie starring Idris Elba! The new development broke my 10-day streak of complete consumption by uncreative thoughts related to my day job.
Finally, I was inspired!
What if, one day I not only completed my novel—but then it became a movie?! Shonda Rhimes could write the script and I could make the career of an up and coming actress when she is cast as my protagonist. But how would I do it? To answer that question, I conducted some research. Below, my friends, are the steps to writing a novel that will one day become a movie:
![House Guests [writing prompt]](https://thewritepractice.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/House-Guests.jpg)
Write about house guests that you or your characters have had recently.
Write for fifteen minutes. When your time is up, post your practice in the comments section. And if you post, be sure to leave feedback on a few practices by other writers.
Happy writing!
You’re a writer, and you’re also a person who has some family, friends and acquaintances, which means you’ll eventually have to reconcile a basic conflict: Writing about the people you know without ticking them off.
Writing about people you know can get uncomfortable quickly. A fiction writer might say, “I hope my boss doesn’t realize I made him the ruler of the underworld in this story, or I might be looking for a new job soon.” Or “When this is published,” a nonfiction writer might worry, “some of these people might never talk to me again.”
Just changing names or a few details here and there isn’t enough to successfully address these issues. (Even writing only positive things doesn’t always work!) Here are five less-conventional ways to get what you want on the page without getting disowned by your family, dumped by your friends, and most importantly, losing the essence of what you’re trying to say.
How do you want a story to end? Should it have a fairy tale ending? A hopeful ending? Or do you like stories with more realistic endings—even if the protagonist doesn’t come out ahead and the villain doesn’t get his?
Several times a month, writers ask me, “How can I balance blogging, Tweeting, Facebooking, Goodreading, and all the other stuff I’m supposed to do to build my platform, while also focusing on my writing? I have a full time job, a family, and a cat. I just don’t have time for all that other stuff.”
Writers today are overwhelmed, frustrated, and let’s be honest, a little pissed off. Why do we have to build a platform anyway? Can’t we just focus on writing?
![The Creativity of Children [writing prompt]](https://thewritepractice.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/creativity-children.jpg)
Spend fifteen minutes free writing about the creativity of children.
When you’ve finished, post it in the comments and comment on a few other practitioners’ pieces.
Many writers say they struggle most with appealing to one’s sense of smell, yet studies say our strongest memories are linked to specific scents.
The most beloved and engaging books are descriptive-rich, engaging all our senses as we move through the story. As writers, we usually have our favorite sense, finding it easy to paint compelling visuals while potentially ignoring, for example, the kinesthetics among us.
To create a full, engaging experience for our readers, however, we must write to delight all five of the senses: sight, sound, smell, touch and taste. Neglect one or several senses and a story becomes flat, one-dimensional and sadly cast aside.
If you’d like to better write to all five senses, here are my three tips: