by Savannah Grace | Apr 22, 2019 | Articles |
I’m addicted to flash fiction. I enjoy the challenge of compacting a story into a thousand words or fewer—and watching other writers do it too! But flash fiction is more than a method for writing quick, poignant stories. It’s an incredibly useful yet overlooked...
by Gabrielle Pollack | Jan 21, 2019 | Articles |
Sometimes characters come to us in pieces. A whisper of dialogue, a murmur of a dream, or even a feeling can ignite a glimmer of inspiration that demands to become a person. But a character is more than a rushed scribble inside our notebooks. Although voice is one of...
by Maddie Morrow | Dec 21, 2018 | Articles |
“You wrote a great story, but it needed a proofreader.” No one likes to hear that their writing is full of mistakes. Whether we’re submitting to a website or writing a story for family, we slave over our words. We don’t want our masterpieces diminished by...
by Brandon Miller | Sep 24, 2018 | Articles |
If your story features more than one character, it probably contains dialogue. Unfortunately, dialogue can be challenging to write, because it needs to sound natural or it will fall flat. As if that isn’t bad news enough, cultivating an ear for dialogue is not an...
by Gabrielle Pollack | Sep 17, 2018 | Articles |
“Be specific,” they say. “It will help your story,” they say. This is good advice, but it’s not always true. “Be specific” does not mean “be specific with every word you write.” The wrong kind of details won’t help, especially in action sequences....
by Gabrielle Pollack | Aug 27, 2018 | Articles |
A unique setting isn’t about how you describe it, but about how a character perceives it. Everything in a story revolves around characters, including setting. Descriptions are not foreign elements that must be incorporated solely because characters need a place...
by Brandon Miller | Aug 20, 2018 | Articles |
You’ve finished the first draft of your novel. What’s next? At some point you’ll need to show your manuscript to a beta reader or two. Seeking an outside opinion is an invaluable and inescapable step in your writing process. Before you send your novel off for critical...
by Mariposa Aristeo | Jul 30, 2018 | Articles |
Writers tend to treat the fine points of writing like chemicals in a science lab. Some jumble style and grammar in an intellectual test tube, uncertain which combination will produce the desired effect. Others avoid the subject because they’re worried it might...
