Writing Dialogue: A Storytelling Exercise
Today’s fiction writing exercise is excerpted from Story Drills: Fiction Writing Exercises, which includes lessons and exercises that help beginning to intermediate storytellers study and practice the craft of storytelling. This exercise, which is from a chapter on narrative, focuses on dialogue. Enjoy! Dialogue Dialogue is one of the most compelling elements of any narrative….Read More
Storytelling: Writing Chapters and Scenes
Today’s post includes excerpts from What’s the Story? Building Blocks for Fiction Writing, chapter nine: “Chapters, Scenes, and Sequences.” Enjoy! Chapters, scenes, and sequences are structural units of storytelling. These are the basic blocks of a story that contain all other elements, from characters, plot, and setting to action, dialogue, and description. Chapters are units within…Read More
Poetry: Making Music with Words
Most writers are primarily concerned with the meaning of the words they choose. Is the language precise and accurate? Do the words provide the best connotation for what the writer is trying to communicate? Does the language show, rather than tell? But poets take language a step further and push it into the realm of…Read More
Ideas for Writing Creative Nonfiction
In fiction writing, we’re often inspired by what-if questions: What if an innocent person is convicted of murder? What if humanity finds itself facing total extinction? What if that rabbit hole leads to a fantastical wonderland? Fiction is driven by imagination. Ideas for writing creative nonfiction often arise from experience and interest rather than imagination….Read More
Sneak Peek at “10 Core Practices for Better Writing” — Read More and Write Better
Today I’d like to share an excerpt from my book, 10 Core Practices for Better Writing. The book explores ten essential habits that every writer can adopt to become a master of the craft of writing. Today’s post features several excerpts from the first chapter, which covers the first and most important practice: reading. If…Read More
How to Prioritize Your Writing Ideas
There are always too many writing ideas or not enough of them. Some days, we writers are so overwhelmed with ideas, it’s impossible to get anything done. Should you work on your novel? That essay you’re writing for your favorite website? You have an original premise for a short story. And you feel a poem…Read More
Writing Resources: The Chicago Manual of Style
This post contains affiliate links. The Chicago Manual of Style is the most widely used resource for American English style, grammar, and punctuation. If you’re working on any kind of writing project and need a solid reference that provides answers for how to consistently apply style and grammar, then this is the book for you….Read More
Poetry Prompts for Paying Tribute
Writers have been expressing their feelings through poetry for centuries. Rant poems release anger, melancholy poems reveal sorrow, and love poems declare affection. Some poems are meant to make readers laugh. Other poems make people think. Tribute poems (or odes) express praise for the poem’s subject. Odes can be written to honor people, animals, objects, and abstract…Read More
From 101 Creative Writing Exercises: You’re the Expert
Here’s an excerpt from 101 Creative Writing Exercises, a book that takes writers on an inspired journey through different forms and genres of writing while offering comprehensive writing techniques, practical experience, and ideas for publishable projects. Each chapter focuses on a different form or concept: freewriting, journaling, fiction, poetry, creativity, and article writing are all covered….Read More
Writing Description in Fiction
Today’s post includes excerpts from What’s the Story? Building Blocks for Fiction Writing, chapter eight: “Description and Exposition.” Enjoy! Without description, readers wouldn’t be able to visualize what’s happening in a story. We need to see the setting and the characters. Because there are no visuals in prose, writers must use words to describe a…Read More
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