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.
Check out the latest articles below or find ones that match your interest in the sidebar.
And make sure to subscribe to get a weekly digest of our latest posts, along with our free guide, 10 Steps to Become a Writer.
I was going to try to tie the election into today’s post, but after twelve out of fourteen ads during Jeopardy were campaign ads, I realized that I have no desire to give either of the candidates that satisfaction. Just make sure you go vote today.
And now, on to more important things, like bathos.
The best part about Daylight Saving Time in the fall is that extra hour we receive. Twenty-five hours in one day. A dream come true, right?
And while you may not realize it, that extra hour offers a prime time to tap into your imagination—without any effort on your part. That’s right—it’s possible to generate ideas in your sleep.
Whether they’re realistic or completely fantastical, dreams are a wonderful source for unique story ideas. You simply have to realize their creative potential. Here are a few ways to mine your dreams for your next big idea:
Write about the beach.
Write for fifteen minutes. When you’re finished, post your practice in the comments section.
And if you post, please comment on a few pieces by other writers.
To win NaNoWriMo, you must write a 50,000 word novel—from scratch—in one month (Nov. 1-30). That’s 1,667 words a day, every day, thirty days straight.
That’s a lot of words. If you’re participating in NaNoWriMo this year, how do you do it? Here are three suggestions.
Facebook is a weird thing. It’s nice because it allows you to keep tabs on who from high school has gotten engaged/pregnant/fat, but it also brings out some of the worst spelling and grammar I’ve ever seen.
When you meet someone who might be the future love of your life, and you add them on Facebook, what are they going to think when they see that you don’t type out the whole word “you” in your status updates, or worse, when they see you used the wrong your/you’re? That’s going to ruin your future chances at marrying them, and then you’re not going to share that beautiful mountain cabin with your two Bernese Mountain Dogs, and you can definitely forget about raising your kids Denver and Dakota in a way that will encourage them to be responsible for their actions while still reminding them that you will always be there for them. You blew it with that misapplied space in “under neath”.
So please, don’t make these mistakes. You know, for the kids.
How do you decide what to write? Are you investigating what the market needs by doing research and asking your followers, or you write about what deeply warms your heart? The publishing industry is tough. Writers know this; hence the boom of self-publishing. Even though satisfying your readers is significant, you need to write what you, as a writer, find so worthy of writing.
I have this friend named Mike who happens to be a great guy with one major pitfall.
Without fail, every time Mike says something which he intends to be funny he has to follow it up by explaining to his quiet, confused audience that it was actually a joke.
Note: If you have to tell your audience when to laugh, you’re not doing it right.
“My secret to writing is to never create at a keyboard,” says Thomas Steinbeck, the author and son of John Steinbeck.
You have to know something about your book before you begin to write your story. I think this is true whether you like to plot your novel before you write or not. You don’t need to know everything, but you do need to know something.
For those of you participating in NaNoWriMo, this is especially important. You don’t want to spend your first days plotting or doing characterization exercises.
Part of writing is asking for feedback. At some point you have to let go of the precious baby and let someone take a look at it. Pick someone you trust but also someone who will challenge you to do better.
Let’s say that you and your friends are watching a spy film. The hero is in restraints and staring down the business end of a laser gun that is threatening to fry off his face. The plucky sidekick is trapped in the middle of a nearby lake, and the spy headquarters has no idea that the hero is even in Abu Dhabi because he was supposed to be in Bucharest, but got sidetracked by a lady. It sure looks like the end for our hero. All of a sudden, a bright light beams down onto our hero, and he disappears, only to rematerialize on Mars. A man in white walks up to him, and says, “Welcome to the space headquarters of the Alliance’s spy network.”
Wait a minute. No one mentioned anything about the Alliance having a space headquarters. The entirety of this plot has been about kidnapping a biological engineer. There hasn’t been any mention of anything outside the Earth’s atmosphere in any context whatsoever. What just happened?
You’ve been blindsided by a deus ex machina
