WRITING TIPS

Descriptions transport readers to another world or time. You may never have seen Camp Half-Blood or Ketterdam or Narnia (we’re pretending...

We’ve all heard it: it’s important to try new things. It’s really tempting to write in the same format all the time, but varying it up...

I can’t believe it has already been a year (as of tomorrow) since I published my first blog post. In realizing this, I decided to take...

April is national poetry month, a reminder of the importance of poets in human history and culture. We can use it to remember famous...

A little laughter goes a long way when your characters and readers are stressing about an impending war. Almost every genre can do with a...

Somehow, this is already my 50th post, so I wanted to take a slightly different, more fun approach to writing and discuss some writing...

While the beginning of a story sets up the world, people, and themes, the end wraps it all together. It’s either a reward or a punishment...

It’s really easy to put down a book after reading a few pages, but it becomes increasingly more difficult to do so as you go on. Once...

When writing their first draft, some authors keep their future readers in mind at all times and others only write because they need to...

SPOILER ALERT: I talk about some famous plot twists below. Most spoilers are for very popular books, which I selected because I assume...

Why is it that the best plot twists always seem to make sense but you never could have predicted them? Foreshadowing is a literary device...

Almost every story can be traced back to some core plotline that can be found in other books of that type. Harry Potter is about the...

“The road to hell is paved with adverbs,” said Stephen King. Many writers have sworn off adverbs entirely and many others stand by them...

Humans have been writing for over 4,500 years. You would think humankind would have discovered a way to make writing easy. After all, one...

Let me start by saying, it is doable. You can have two, three, or twenty-seven stories you are working on and make progress on all of...

Happy New Year! As you start to work toward (or give up on) your New Year’s resolutions, now is a good time to think about your writing...

Happy almost New Year! Considering tomorrow is already New Year’s Eve, I wanted to take some time to look back on the year and think...

In previous posts, I have discussed drafting, revising, and editing, but however difficult these stages of the writing process may be,...

After working on a project for years, months, or maybe just a few hours, you might discover that you no longer have the motivation to...

The step after revising is the one despised by most writers. It can be tedious and annoying, and it’s often a cause for headaches. It’s...