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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“How often do you blog?” these writers would ask.
“Every day,” I’d say, with the stiff upper lip required of such statements.
“Wow. I don’t know how you do it.” I usually tell them it’s like my second job, that if they treated blogging like their job, they could do it, too. However, some still aren’t satisfied.
“I would run out of ideas!” they say.
“Family is like fudge: mostly sweet with a few nuts.” – Anonymous
The challenge is: how do you capture those nutty relations in writing?
Crowd scenes are the hardest to write. Throw together a crowd with years of shared memories, emotions, and tensions and you might as well just give up now.
Wait!
Once a month, we stop practicing and invite you to show off your best work. This might be for you if: You want to be published (in print) You want to improve your writing You enjoy a little competition You like the Write Practice Interested? Show Off Your Best Work...
This story, by Tara Boyce, was the winner of our Show Off Writing Contest: Love Story Edition earlier this month. Tara is a student at BYU, where she studies literature and writing. You can read more of her writing on her blog. I'm quite proud to post her story, "On...
PRACTICE Write about Chicago. Write for fifteen minutes. When you're finished, post your practice in the comments section. And if you post, make sure to give some other Practitioners some feedback. This prompt is somewhat selfish, since I'm actually going to Chicago...
If you’re using the word "some" in your creative writing, you’re not being specific enough. For example, here is a sentence with the word "some." Tom liked to play guitar but didn't take it as seriously as some. Who is some? Why do they take it so seriously, and how...
Repetition is an important principle in every artistic pursuit from music to painting to literature. It gives you another layer of meaning to work with and can add a level of symbolic value to your seemingly casual description, dialogue, or action. Today, I'd like to...
I'm in the middle of a writing project with a tight deadline, but despite the looming due date, I've been struggling to work on it. I keep opening up the document, reading a few lines, and then shooting off to do Facebook for fifteen minutes. I feel ashamed with...
About a month ago, we talked about head hopping, POV, and how to manage third person limited point of view. After I posted the article on one of my social networks, one poor writer said something like, "I want to scream! First they tell us one thing and then someone...
Let's talk about plot for a moment. Talia and I spent most of this weekend watching Downton Abbey. By most, I mean nearly all our waking hours. We watched all seven episodes of season one between the hours of 8:30 and 3:30 AM. The next day we began again at 10:30 and...
