WRITING TIPS

For those of us in the United States, we are now about a month into the school year. High school is a transformative and enjoyable...

Near the end of July, I joined the board of The Young Writers Initiative (TYWI), a fiscally sponsored nonprofit organization dedicated to...

Writing a novel is an incredibly rewarding experience. The ability to say, even if only to yourself, I sent characters on the journey of...

I recently wrapped up final edits on The Prisons of Magic, so I thought this post was in order. From the moment you realize you’re almost...

All writers are readers at heart. For most of us, our love for storytelling spawned from the joy of reading stories. Readers look at...

Importance As Andrew Grant said, “You never get a second chance to make a first impression.” This applies to the manuscript you submit to...

If you’ve been a part of the writing community for any length of time, you’ve probably been told a million rules. Here’s the thing:...

Last week’s post focused on literary elements, the large aspects of a story that come together to form a novel. This week, we look at the...

Literary elements are the foundation of all stories. Plot, characters, setting, theme, and style define a novel. They are what readers...

Fillers are curious things. They don’t add anything to the sentence and getting rid of them doesn’t affect anyone. However, we naturally...

At heart, books are defined by the decisions of their characters. That’s why it is essential that characters have a clear moral code....

For most novels, a chapter is to a book like a word is to a sentence. Chapters are the building block of your novel and can be used to...

Trying to understand the writing community can be challenging at first. There are so many abbreviations and terms that writers just throw...

No writer likes to think about word count. It can destroy the creativity process, force you to cut out your favorite parts of your story,...

Dialogue, description, action, and narrative—all fiction novels will have some of each, but most writers will use some more than others....

If you have finished the first draft of your novel, congratulations! Take a break. You deserve it. One week later, you come back and read...

Dialogue is a wonderful tool: it can be used for characterization, worldbuilding, advancing the plot, and so much more. Here are some...

Unfortunately, writing isn’t all about plotlines and characters. Yes, these are the things you want your reader to be engrossed in, but...

Relationship arcs make amazing subplots (or main plots, depending on your genre), especially when done well. First, be sure to take a...

Writer’s block: the archnemesis of all writers. It comes at you out of nowhere, making you wonder why you even began writing in the first...