Improve Your Writing

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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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Is It Worthwhile to Write My Memoir, Especially If a Publishing Deal Is Unlikely?

An experienced author of advanced age considers the value of tackling a memoir with resonant themes but a challenging road to publication.
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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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The Hallmarks of a Bad Argument

Many people argue using bad-faith tactics. Much more difficult is to engage the best ideas we disagree with, and explain our opposition clearly.
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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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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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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 Deal With Rejection: Celebrate!

One author believes that celebrating your rejections is part of how you take your power back.
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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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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 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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First Page Critique: Defining the Scope of Your Memoir

Readers don’t want to start a memoir already knowing the ending, but it’s important that your pitch specifically defines your story’s scope.
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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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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.