21 Ways to Improve Your Writing
It’s not possible to improve your writing overnight, unless you hire an expert to do it for you. People study the craft for years, decades even, and still they strive to make each piece of writing better than the last. Sure, there might be some quick tricks and shortcuts you can pick up and apply…Read More
Writing Tips: Write What You Know
A common piece of writing advice is write what you know. When I first heard this advice, I thought it was odd. I don’t remember where I first heard it, but I remember thinking that as far as writing tips went, it was absurd. What about writing from your imagination or your feelings? How do genres…Read More
Creative Writing Prompts for Sci-Fi & Fantasy Lovers
Today’s post includes a selection of prompts from my book, 1200 Creative Writing Prompts. Enjoy! In the world of creative writing, we’ve only begun tapping the possibilities in speculative fiction, a genre that includes science fiction, fantasy, paranormal, supernatural, horror, and superhero stories, as well as anything that ventures beyond known reality. Speculative fiction is…Read More
Storytelling Exercise: Process
Today’s storytelling exercise comes from my book Story Drills: Fiction Writing Exercises, which is packed with lessons and exercises for beginning to intermediate storytellers. This one is about developing a process. Enjoy! Process A typical writing process includes the following steps: brainstorm, outline, research, draft, revise, edit, proof, and publish. Sounds pretty straightforward, doesn’t it? But…Read More
Creating Authentic Character Relationships
As storytellers, we often look for ways to make our characters as lifelike as possible: we give them internal struggles, external goals, difficult challenges, and hard choices to make, all while raising the stakes and doling out consequences for every action our characters take. Today let’s examine an oft-overlooked element of storytelling: character relationships. I…Read More
Types of Rhymes in Poetry
We’re all familiar with rhyming poems. After all, these are the first poems most of us encounter as children, from the delightful stories of Dr. Seuss to the hilarious poetry of Shel Silverstein. People often think rhyming poems are rigid, conforming to strict meter and perfect rhymes at the end of every line, but within…Read More
Punctuation Marks: Parentheses
Parentheses are among the most useful and versatile punctuation marks in the English language. They can be used effectively in both formal and casual writing, and the rules surrounding parentheses allow writers to use them for a variety of purposes. They just might be my favorite punctuation marks, simply because they provide a clear way…Read More
From Ready, Set, Write: Getting Ready to Write
Today, I’m excited to share an excerpt from my book, Ready, Set, Write: A Guide to Creative Writing. This is from the book’s introduction. Enjoy! A Writer’s Journey Begins When I was a little girl, my mom used to sit, curled up on the couch, with a thick paperback novel in her hands and a…Read More
Good Grammar, Spelling, and Punctuation
Let’s get technical for a minute. What, exactly, is grammar? Here’s what Wikipedia says: In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of sentences, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules….Linguists do not normally use the term to refer to orthographical rules, although usage books and style…Read More
How to Critique Other Writers’ Work
As a writer, it helps to be thick-skinned. Once you put your work out there, people will judge, review, and criticize it. But critiques are more helpful when they are received long before publication. In fact, critiques are one of the best ways to improve your writing. Many writers who want critiques that will help…Read More
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