New Daily Writing Guides from The Write Practice

What TV Can Teach You About Lazy Writing

As a writers, you are sensitive to words. After all, they’re your currency. Even when you’re taking a break to watch TV, you may unconsciously be evaluating—with disdain or grudging admiration—the words you encounter. Developing sensitivity for lazy language can help you assuage any lingering guilt for taking breaks, especially with TV shows.

Admittedly a rationale for marathon TV watching, I discovered that television shows can teach valuable lessons in our writing, especially to spot those standard scripted sentences like, “I want my lawyer,” “Crash cart, STAT, and “We need to talk.” Once we recognize the penchant for too-easy language, we can learn from and avoid it in our writing.

Here I describe two types of lazy language and suggest lessons we can learn from them and remedies to apply in your own work.

What Having a Baby Taught Me About Writing

by Joe Bunting | 30 Comments

On Thursday, April 18, my son Marston Atticus made his dramatic entrance into the world. In last week, I have changed forty-seven diapers, swaddled sixty-four times, and bounced him to sleep for innumerable hours. What I haven’t done much of is write. Yes, I’ve jotted down the occasional note to jog my memory later, but this post is the first serious writing I’ve managed to do. Babies take a lot of time!

However, having a baby has also taught me something surprising about writing and drama.

The Difference Between Writers and Wanna-Bes

by Joe Bunting | 59 Comments

There’s still something inside of me that is excited when people ask what I do for a living and I get to tell them I’m a writer. After that declaration, the conversation goes one of two ways…

Why You Should Write about the Everyday

by Melissa Tydell | 58 Comments

Some people think writing about everyday occurrences is uninteresting. But I like to believe that the everyday is what connects writers with readers, as human beings who share a common or not-so-common world.

What is it about the everyday—the small details, the routines and rituals—that resonates so deeply?

Never Have Writer's Block Again

by Joe Bunting | 22 Comments

I'm a better writer on a deadline. The clock is ticking and there is no other option than write. When the time is free and endless opportunities for story direction and unique concepts and different ways to structure present themselves, I know I'll be sitting for a...

Yum! Why You Should Use Food in Your Stories

by The Magic Violinist | 16 Comments

If you love food as much as I do, then you probably put a lot of it in your writing. Food can be a nice touch for any kind of writing: fantasy, non-fiction, mystery, anything! (Is anyone else getting hungry)?

Here are three ways to incorporate food into your writing.

The Flip Side: Writing Villain Protagonists

by Liz Bureman | 16 Comments

We’re used to rooting for our protagonists. The easiest way to get an audience behind your character is to give them a moral compass that consistently points toward good. But what happens if your main character’s moral compass points in the opposite direction? Or if they have no moral compass at all?

Welcome to the world of the villain protagonist.

Writers and Places: Does Location Matter?

by Joe Bunting | 43 Comments

Does it matter where a writer lives: a big city or the countryside; a two-story house or a basement; a culturally diverse or monotonous neighborhood? Yes, it does. Why is this? There’s a romanticized notion that in the past, writers were generally poor, struggling to get by in attics.

Environments affect all people; this has been confirmed in sociological studies of human life, and urban studies in particular. What surrounds us affects how we feel, what we do, what we think and how we channel these thoughts and emotions.