The interview is the most used tool in a journalist’s bag, from Barbara Walters down to the guy who writes up the local pee-wee football game. They all interview.
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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.
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How to Make Up New Words
Someday I will write an Experimenters Manifesto. We need more people who take risks to try something new. On Saturdays, we at the Write Practice experiment. We break rules because rules, in the realm of writing, do not exist. The best we get is best practices, and...
The Soldier and the Most Vulnerable Man In the World
Today I heard the story of Ed Dobson, who has Lou Gehrig's disease. Ten years ago, doctors told him he had two to five years to live. He is still alive. However, he sometimes can't button his shirt. And when his son was sent to Iraq, he said, "Enough is enough, God."...
Like It Or Not, Your Blog has a Brand
I recently got a chance to review my first book on the Write Practice. The cool thing about reviewing a book is you get it for free before anyone else. The bad thing about reviewing a book, is that you have to read it, good or not. Fortunately, 31 Days to Finding Your...
Six Elements to a Story that Won’t Get You Slapped
Since we're talking about story today, why don't we kick it off with one. As you read, see if you can identify the element of storytelling. I walked over to Tommy and slapped him in the face. “Argh!” he said. “Why did you do that?” “You know why,” I said. Some...
You Don’t Forget Stories
How can you get people to remember your ideas? You spend months, years of your life crafting a book that's going to change the world, you publish it to great acclaim, and then you ask a reader, "What was your favorite part of the book? What did you learn?" And they...
How to Write Like a University Prof
A friend recently told me about jazz. Jazz musicians, he said, spend years learning the rules of music for one reason: So they know how to break them. While they play, the goal is to create something like a musical graph with a hundred different random points all over...
James Joyce: How to Write Like a Child in Seven Steps
I recently started reading James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which is, according to the back of my cheap copy, “one of the masterpieces of modern fiction.” The novel is confusing, and if I'm honest with myself, the only thing that kept me going...
How to Write About Raw Emotion
Writers read, but they also listen. Every writer I know loves music as much as or more than they do reading. When I first started writing, I didn't compose blogs or novels or non-fiction books; I wrote songs. The poetry of all those beautiful words sung like pearls on...
Ann Voskamp: Drop Your Articles
About a quarter of the way through the book I stopped reading. Did she really just do that? I thought. Here is the paragraph that struck me:
The crusted pan that baked the chocolate-melt bars slides off the tower of bowls crashes to the floor. Pick it up and watch it sink into sink.
I found that last part, “sink into sink,” open-your-mouth-and-furrow-your-brow fascinating. Not because she plays with the double meaning of sink, but because she drops her article.
Thus begins Voskamp’s One Thousand Gifts, a book about how to live fully, experience more joy; about how to be thankful, even for the mundane, even for the tragedies. You don’t forget stories, and if you can prove your point with stories, you can teach people more effectively than if you just told them what to do.