Improve Your Writing

Brooke McIntyre of Inked Voices explains what to look for in a critique group and how to find the best writing critique group for you.

Fear can limit our ability to apply reason and logic, leading to flawed choices and behavior—bad in real life, but story gold in fiction.

Omniscient POV might be resurging, thanks to some recent bestsellers. To use it well, remember three C’s: clarity, consistency, and control.

Transitioning away too often—to a flashback or a new scene—risks losing the depth of storytelling that readers get from living inside a scene.

One memoir coach sees writers rush ahead into chapters and character detail before understanding: Why am I writing this exact story right now?

A repeated word, phrase, motif, symbol, or image can create tension for your readers in small, barely noticeable increments.

Before trying to structure a memoir, you must understand how you’ve changed and what that process looked like—which can be hard to pinpoint.

Most characters have a challenge to overcome, but what about more serious physical or psychological issues that can’t be “cured” or ignored?

Faced with pursuing publication that might reopen old wounds, one memoirist overcame the challenge with help from therapy, community, and AI.

When a writer began to see her mother with compassion, her writing changed—and her stories started getting published.

Three practices separate successful memoirists from those who underestimate the writing craft.

Lack of support might come from fears about their own privacy, not understanding the enormity of your achievement, and/or information overload.

Applying genre labels to creative work can be vexing, but understanding each genre’s core concerns can also be inspiring and instructional.

When a scene shifts to a new setting, time, or POV without clearly bridging that gap, we risk losing readers’ trust and goodwill.

There’s no one-size-fits-all way to structure a story, so understanding the core principles will help you decide what’s right for yours.

Making the leap from short online articles to longer, narrative work brought one writer into contact with a new challenge: being truly edited.

By observing our own species through the eyes of another, something new just might be revealed to us.

The first question is often some version of “What happened to me?” Understanding it helps craft a story that speaks to your readers’ needs.

If you’re overwhelmed by the volume of accumulated words after months or years of generating new material, here’s how to tame and shape them.

Stories are like trains: a connected chain of main events (railcars) and transitions (couplings), with very little stopping at platforms.

Writing outside our lived experience isn’t just about getting facts right—it’s also about learning who we are when we truly listen to others.

One writer explains why you shouldn’t necessarily get feedback on your first draft—and what you should do instead.

Your story’s tone and content don’t have to match—and when they don’t, they can combine to create something greater than their sum.

A successful story unfurls in a way that both keeps readers grounded and keeps them guessing—so withhold information, but not context.

Improv is about being in the moment, and showed one author how to let go, listen better, take risks, and move on when something doesn’t work.