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Why I Prefer to Read Fiction without Lessons or Messages

As with abstract painting, fiction can find worth in technique rather than specific meaning—emphasizing not the What, but the How.
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What It Means to Make Your Story Relatable

When author and readers have little in common, what makes writing relatable? A teacher examines Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird to find out.
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Amazon’s Orange Banner: The Anticlimax of Achievement

The euphoria of hitting the top spot on Amazon can quickly give way to the realization that it hasn’t fundamentally changed much at all.
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How Connected Settings Give Your Fiction Emotional Depth

To create unforgettable scenes, purposefully choose settings that trigger character emotions, intensify conflicts, or evoke specific moods.
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How to Create Character Mannerisms from Backstory Wounds

To be vivid on the page, each character you write should display life-long emotional responses to wounds that occurred in their past.
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The Flashback: A Greatly Misunderstood Storytelling Device

Flashback can be a potent tool for presenting essential backstory, as long as you apply it without interrupting the story’s forward momentum.
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Get Started With Dictation: Choosing the Best Techniques and Tools for You

One author shares what she’s learned about using voice dictation to write in any setting: on a walk, washing the dishes, even lying in bed.
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The Other Pitch Packages Authors Should Prepare

When soliciting blurbs or appearances on podcasts, its important to convey—in just a few lines—what you and your writing are about.
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Media Training for Authors: 6 Ways to Become a Go-To Expert

Advice on getting your foot in the door as an on-air expert, from someone who spent two decades booking authors for TV appearances.
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3 Ways to Use Theme to Deepen Your Story

Identifying and bolstering your story’s theme can develop a layered narrative that resonates with readers on conscious and subconscious levels.
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How Can You Tell If You’re Starting Your Story in the Right Place?

To make readers care, you generally need to get three things on your novel’s opening pages before the inciting incident arrives.
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Finding the Funny: 8 Tips on Writing Humor

This author didn’t think of herself as a humor writer until her readers told her otherwise, so she dug into what makes her work funny.
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Does Your Multiple Storyline Novel Work? Questions to Ask Yourself

Whether you’re a plotter, a pantser, or something in between, a little planning can help prepare you for the challenges of writing multiples.
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Lessons from 23 Years as a Self-Publishing Novelist

An author who self-published before the current tools existed offers some thoughts on the mindset required to succeed in this business.
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How to Read to Elevate Your Writing Practice

Reading like a writer, focusing on the craft and mechanics on the page, will offer insight to how beautiful and meaningful novels are made.
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How to Successfully Pitch Op-Eds and Timely Cultural Pieces

Writing an opinion piece about a topic in the news or in the zeitgeist is a way for even inexperienced writers to get the attention of editors.
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How Smaller Organisms Adapt to Amazon in the Self-Publishing Ecosystem

An independent author wonders why two publishing services companies sell their clients’ books at different prices than Amazon.
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Explore the Fictional Character That You Present to Readers

Readers of your work create their own idea of you that is, in a sense, a fictional character. Explore voice by leaning into that fiction.
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Mining Your Memories: 3 Forms of Memory Every Memoirist Must Know

Understanding how your memories work, and what to do with the less reliable ones, will help you with the meaning-making process.
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How to Land an Agent for a Graphic Novel

While artists don’t necessarily need an agent to get into comics, these tips will help graphic novelists seeking traditional publication.
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Book Family Tree: A New Way to Think About Your Book

When choosing comp titles, try envisioning your book as an entry on a family tree to help identify both close and distant relations.
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How to Deal With Rejection: Celebrate!

One author believes that celebrating your rejections is part of how you take your power back.
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An Unconventional Facebook Ads Strategy for Authors

An expert discovered that the accepted best practices for Facebook ads were driving down results, so he forged a new methodology.
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First Page Critique: How to Better Establish the Tone in Your Opening

When a book is being pitched as a murder-mystery with comedic undertones, it’s important to seed those elements in the opening pages.
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Pay Yourself to Write

Today is the day you start building financial habits to acknowledge the inherent monetary worth of your writing.
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Building Your Brand on TikTok Isn’t Curation, It’s Authenticity

As authors, how do we make social media work for us? Here’s how one history nerd used the power of TikTok to create a community of readers.
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Decide Where You’re Standing in Time as You Write Your Memoir

Memoirists must make conscious decisions about time—the time frame of the story and where in time you are standing while telling your tale.
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What Character Arc Isn’t

Character arc isn’t created from a patchwork of different issues. It’s one clear thread that runs the whole length of your novel.
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The Peril and Promise of Writing in First-Person POV

Writing a compelling first-person novel requires creative ingenuity, extraordinary empathy, and a boatload of courage.
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Why Preparing a TED Talk Makes You a Better Memoirist (Even If You Never Intend to Get on Stage)

If you’re struggling to shape life experiences into a story, consider key points that illustrate a common thread, as if preparing a TED Talk.
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Pitch Yourself Before You Pitch Your Book

If your query letter isn’t standing out from the pack, consider leading with what makes you, not your story, compelling.
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It Might Be Time for a Reality Check on Your Writing Goals

Goal-setting is much like the Alcoholic’s Prayer: accept what’s beyond our control, assess what we’re able to change, and know the difference.
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The Forgotten Element of Story: The Author

Embracing the You in your story can feel frightening, but it’s the best way to craft a novel that is truly unforgettable.
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Gray Space: Making Room for the Reader

When we let the reader fill in our intentionally left blanks, or “gray space”, we invite them inside our imaginary worlds.
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How My Newsletter Helped Me Land an Agent and a Big Five Book Deal

While a newsletter might not sell your book, writing one can change your work for the better and help build valuable relationships.
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How to Figure Out Which Writing Advice Fits You Best

Like clothing, writing advice should be tried on to see if it fits you and your writing life. Here are five tips for assessing what works.
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Villain Logic: The Key to Solving Your Thriller’s Climax Block

When writing thriller, authors must understand our villain’s motivations, end goals, and progressive, logical actions toward that goal.
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Book Files and Formats: How to Protect Your Writing Investment

Owning and protecting your publishing source files is one of the most important things a writer can do to protect their writing asset.
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8 Tips for Authors to Boost Their Homepage

The average visitor spends on average 54 seconds on a webpage. Here are some tips to help turn visitors into readers, buyers, or subscribers.
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Is Deep Third an Actual POV?

Used well, deep third can be one of the most intimate, engaging, revealing ways for readers to viscerally share your character’s world.
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How to Write a Nonfiction Book Chapter Without Tears

If you sit down to write and find that you can’t, the typical reason is that you don’t know what job the chapter is supposed to do.
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What Makes a Novel Stand Out on Submission?

Stories with a real sense of meaning don’t merely stand out in the slush pile—they’re the types of stories that make for a better world.
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I Hired ChatGPT As My Writing Coach

Engaging with generative AI in a way that enriches human creativity, you can take your writing further than you might have on your own.
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10 Ways to Nurture a Young Writer

What do you do when a teen in your life is a diehard writer? When they won’t clean their room and just want to write stories or poems all day?
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3 Ways Writers Block Their Success (While Thinking They’re Hard at Work)

Working hard isn’t necessarily a virtue if it masks the ways that we might be sabotaging our own paths to success and fulfillment.
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When Do You Need an Author Website?

A little planning and reflection will help your website be a project you sustain, rather than discard like a half-baked draft.
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When Your Characters Speak a Language Other Than English

No matter what language our characters are speaking, writers should strive to express dialogue and inner thoughts in a naturalistic way.
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How to Develop a Complex Protagonist

With these four elements you’ll be able to create a more compelling protagonist and, as a result, a more interesting story.
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Are You Sure You Don’t Have an Author Platform?

An amateur historian finds that her passion has led to enough expertise and authority for her book proposal to be taken seriously.
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The Right Way to Ask a Published Writer for Publishing Advice

Here are some tips on what to do before approaching a published writer with questions about how to get your book published.