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4 Ways to Motivate Characters and Plot
Some of your characters will change during the course of your story—let’s call them changers. Others—stayers—will not change significantly in personality or outlook, but their motivations may...
View ArticleBOOT CAMP THIS WEEKEND: Using Story Structure to Create a Better Book
If you’ve never tried a writing boot camp, you’re missing out: three days of instruction, deadlines and discipline all wrapped into one weekend that will force you to forward your writing career. And...
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How to Organize Time for a Dramatic Story
Every story, like every sequence of memorable events in life, has its own chronology; that is, significant happenings with a beginning, middle, and end. As we have said, they may not however be told in...
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How to Develop Any Idea Into a Great Story
Awhile ago I attended an inventors’ club meeting. Some of the members had already launched successful products and were working on more, while others were merely beginners with great ideas. The...
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Editors’ Newest Concern: Penmanship
Recently at the Writing 3.0 Conference, a panel of editors surprised attendees when they said that while plot and character development are important, the key to getting their attention—and a book...
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Dear Writers: What Have Been Your Career-Changing Moves?
Want to be featured in an upcoming issue of Writer’s Digest? Here’s your chance.We’re busy putting together an issue about how to “Take Control of Your Career,” and we want to hear from you about how...
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The 411 on Contest Guidelines and Formatting for Writers
Q: When submitting a story via email for a contest, how should it be formatted? Text format? Single or double spaced? You get the idea.— D. HolcombCompetition submission guidelines—much like all...
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7 Creative Writing Prompts To Spark Your Writing
Man I hate writer’s block. We all get stuck in a writing rut from time to time. Sometimes it gets so bad for me that I can’t even come up with a clever status update for Facebook—for Facebook! If my...
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5 Ways to Deal with Word Repetition
Word repetition can really weigh down your writing and slow down readers. Try out these five simple ways to tackle word repetition and improve your writing skills.1. Develop Your EarI believe “word...
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Have You Written Something Great? It’s Time For Some Recognition
When your writing wins an award, it gives it more credibility. It’s a badge that says to others, “My writing is good and I have proof.” One competition worth checking out is the Writer’s Digest Annual...
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The 4 Best Strategies for Savvy Self-Publishers
Did you know that at one time, many books in the U.S. were actually published by their authors? It wasn’t until book publishing consolidated in response to industrialization and grew into a national...
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How to Create Tension Through Misdirection
A car engine breaks the stillness of the night … the smell of seaweed intrudes on an afternoon chess game … an unopened letter slips behind couch cushions.These are what we might call “plot-hypers,” in...
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Memoir vs. Autobiography
Q: What’s the difference between a memoir and an autobiography? —MartyA: In some general contexts, memoir and autobiography can be used interchangeably. In fact, Amazon.com puts them in the same...
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5 Ways to Make Your Novel More Suspenseful
A character who unknowingly carries a bomb around as if it were an ordinary package is bound to work up great suspense in the audience. —Alfred HitchcockSuspense happens when a scene becomes charged...
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8 Steps To Help Secure Your Beyonce Interview
Whether you’re a rookie or veteran freelance writer, you’ll always have to create story pitches to entice new clients or keep old ones. Some may include speaking with a high profile interview subject...
View Article10 Questions Writers Must Ask Before Quitting Their Day Job
“The thing is, most writers don’t quit their day jobs, like you did, to start full-time writing and promoting their first books. But sometimes that’s what it takes to be successful.”It was a simple...
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Tackling Historical Fiction
What a pleasure it is to put on a pair of heavy socks, curl up on the couch, and be transported back to Elizabethan England or medieval Denmark or the snows of Czarist Russia through a work of...
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10 Questions with Humor Writer Dan Zevin, Author of Dan Gets a Minivan
Dan Zevin has written a lot of funny books—Entry-Level Life: A Complete Guide to Masquerading as a Member of the Real World, The Day I Turned Uncool: Confessions of a Reluctant Grownup, The Nearly-wed...
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How to Push Your Characters to Their Limits
Most of us at some point in our reading lives have come upon a scene where one of the characters does something so odd it doesn’t just defy expectation, it stops us cold.We’re not pleasantly intrigued,...
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How to Prevent Predictible Plots
Okay, I admit it. I plan my day around favorite night-soap television shows. But the longer I’ve been writing, the more I find myself almost involuntarily critiquing what I watch.Even though I’m not...
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