Melissa Donovan | Writing Forward

Storytelling Exercise: Character Choices

Today’s storytelling exercise is an excerpt from my book, Story Drills: Fiction Writing Exercises, which helps beginning to intermediate storytellers develop skills in the craft of fiction writing. This exercise explores one of the most important elements of any story: the characters. It’s called “Character Choices.” Enjoy! Character Choices We get to wherever we are…Read More

sneak peek what's the story buiilding blocks for fiction writing

Sneak Peek: What’s the Story? Building Blocks for Fiction Writing

Today I’m sharing a look inside my book, What’s the Story? Building Blocks for Fiction Writing. This excerpt is from the introduction; it talks about the magic of story and what you can expect from the book. Enjoy! What’s the Story? What’s a story? Is it character? Plot? Conflict? Change? Why do some stories fall…Read More

Using Imagery in Poetry Writing

When we talk about imagery, we’re usually referring to visuals — whatever we can see with our eyes. In literary (and more specifically, poetry) terms, imagery is anything that represents a sensory experience, regardless of whether it’s experienced through the eyes, ears, nose, mouth, or hands. There are various types of imagery that we can…Read More

Would You Rather Have Skill or Talent as a Writer?

Is effective writing borne of skill or talent? There has always been a debate about whether artistic trades are a matter of learned skill or inherent talent. On the one hand, there is the belief that some are born with active and imaginative right brains and are therefore better able to manifest creativity. On the…Read More

How to Become a Better Writer

There’s more to writing than pushing a pen across a piece of paper, and there’s more to being a writer than having written. These days, everyone’s a writer. We write emails, text messages, and lists. A free blog is just a few clicks away. Self-publishing has drawn tens of thousands of dreamers who have scrawled…Read More

Writing Tips: Eliminate Redundancies in Your Writing

Writers are human, and sometimes we make mistakes. You’re probably aware of the most common mistakes in writing: comma splices, run-on sentences, mixing up homophones, and a variety of other broken grammar, spelling, and punctuation rules. In my coaching work, I’ve noticed another common mistake: redundancy. Sometimes we use repetition effectively, but most of the…Read More

Writing Resources: The Pocket Muse

This post contains affiliate links that earn commissions for this website from qualifying purchases. We writers can’t be inspired every day. Sometimes we get burned out. Other times, our ideas seem unappealing. We find ourselves grappling with an idea that’s incomplete or we might be seeking lots of small ideas for a big project. But…Read More

Philosophical Journal Prompts

What is philosophy? Let’s turn to Wikipedia for a simple, straightforward definition: “Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language…It is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational argument.” Today’s journal…Read More

Storytelling Exercise: Plot Analysis

Today’s storytelling exercise is an excerpt from my book, Story Drills: Fiction Writing Exercises, which helps beginning to intermediate storytellers develop skills in the craft of fiction writing. This exercise explores one of the most important elements of any story: plot. It’s called “Plot Analysis.” Enjoy! Plot Analysis Some readers think analyzing a plot takes…Read More

Kill Your Darlings (for Storytellers)

Some writing tips are cryptic. When I first came across writing advice that said, “Kill your darlings,” I thought it meant we should kill off our favorite characters. That seemed ridiculous. I mean, there are situations in which a story calls for characters to die, but to make a sweeping rule that we should default…Read More