Improve Your Writing

An Author’s Note can be the most direct way to communicate your book’s themes to editors, marketers, librarians, teachers, and readers.

One author discovers that when it comes to heavily-researched historical fiction, one’s ducks should be in a row before tackling NaNoWriMo.

Academics or experts writing for a broader audience than peers should consider framing complex facts through a personal lens.

There will absolutely be tape lines to adjust and plot questions to answer along the way, so don’t let the prep prevent messy progress.

Memoir can benefit from starting at the moment that change became inevitable, then explaining what came before and what followed.

Worry less about creating a first sentence that will shock and awe, and more about drawing readers into the story one link of the chain at a time.

Nonfiction writers have to decide where to collect their stories and how much to rely on their personal experience.

Struggling with the plot of your current work-in-progress? Maybe one of these tried and true solutions will do the trick for you.

It's easier to write beginnings and endings but often the middle is left sagging—not out of the lack of skill or care, but out of confusion.

Here are three techniques to help you write about an event when your memories of it are scattered, shattered, or gone.

Spooky season is the perfect time to write that Gothic fiction tale you've been brewing. Learn the key genre conventions and how to outline your story.

An in era of episodic adventure stories, Sense and Sensibility offered a novel with what modern readers would recognize as plot structure.

Whether your writing partner is your spouse, best friend, or a colleague, here are some tips on setting expectations and sharing the work.

Interiority adds emotional context for what your characters experience. Learn when interiority is appropriate, and how much to use.

Asking yourself these questions can reveal whether your big idea is well suited to be a book—vs. a podcast, newsletter, or something else.

Point of view is rarely the first storytelling element authors focus on in creating their stories, but it can arguably be the most important.

In general, we don’t turn to fiction for stories about perfect people. What really makes us care is understanding another’s vulnerabilities.

Readers crave stories that are rich and immersive; novels that fall far below the standard word counts might be ripe for improvement.

Retellings, like any genre, come with their own characteristics and conventions to honor the original text and meet reader expectations.

Your characters’ movements and gestures in any given space must convey enough to paint the scene for readers without becoming too detailed.

Believable magic systems will not only keep fantasy writers organized but will also help readers stay more immersed in the story’s world.

Academia lets writers get away with stringing together facts, but appealing to a general audience means constructing a compelling narrative.

Just as you wouldn’t paint a house under construction, you need to revise with an eye on story structure before you dress up the writing.

A good editor can help a scholar ensure that the complexity of what they are writing about is intelligently and clearly conveyed.

Expert advice is valuable but it’s how you assess it that makes it meaningful and useful, because what works for one writer may not work for another.