3 Bad Writing Habits Preventing You From Writing (And How to Break Them)

How do you break bad habits? More importantly, how do you break bad writing habits that prevent you from finishing that manuscript you’ve been talking about for months, maybe even years? Let’s be honest: it’s hard breaking habits, especially when it comes to bad writing habits. Writing is a career that requires a lot of self-motivation. In other...

18h

9 Key Strategies for How to Research a Novel

Have you ever started a story, gotten halfway through, and realized you don’t know key facts about your story’s world? Have you ever wondered how to find out the size of spoons in Medieval England for your fantasy adventure story? Is that even relevant to your plot, or could you skip that fact? Here’s how to research your novel. As fiction writers,...

2d

How to Write a Book Title in MLA Formatting

You’re writing a paper for school and suddenly you stop in the middle of the sentence. You have to write a book title, but you don’t how to format it. How do you format a book title in MLA style? Good news: you’re in the write place (sorry, I had to). In this post, we’ll talk about MLA style and formatting, whether it’s appropriate for your project,...

5d

How to Track Your Writing Progress (And Why You Should)

How much are you writing? Every day? Every week? If you want to be a writer, you’ll need to know the answers to these questions. It’s time to track your writing progress. I’m going to be honest. When I first started writing, I thought keeping track of my writing progress was ridiculous. How many words I wrote in a day or how frequently I wrote depended...

1w

Backstory and Memory: Definitions, Differences, and When to Use Each

The choices your characters make within your story are shaped by their past, which means sometimes, you’ll need to communicate to your reader events that happened before your story began. Not sure how? Try memory or backstory to share the past in the present. You are a deep, complex, and interesting individual, and so it goes without saying that...

2w

What Are You Struggling With In Your Writing?

Hey writers. Well, it’s been a weird, hard, interesting year, right? Great news: 2020 is almost over (thank goodness), and as we start looking ahead to 2021, I want to hear from you. What are you struggling with as far as your writing goes? How can The Write Practice help you? We as a team are in the midst of thinking through what we want to focus...

3w

3 Powerful Ways to Hook Your Reader With Emotion

In college, I majored in communication, and the first thing I learned is that communication is a two-way street—it needs a sender and a receiver. As writers, we are senders, and our readers are receivers. But what are we communicating? Stories, at their core, are a medium for communicating many things, but chief among them is emotion. That means one...

3w

How to “Show, Don’t Tell” in Writing With Active or Passive Scenes

We’ve all heard of passive vs. active sentences. Active sentences such as “three men stood by the gate” are more attractive and interesting than passive sentences such as “there were three men standing by the gate.” But the concept of active vs. passive can also be applied to scenes within a story. Appropriate use of active and passive scenes can...

4w

Monsters and Villains: What’s the Difference and When Do You Use Them?

Both villains and monsters are considered antagonists, but there are differences between the two. You’ll want to choose which version of antagonist you’re using based on the purpose and tone of your story. The Main Difference Between Villains and Monsters You probably think this is an easy one. “Well, monsters are . . . monstrous. Villains aren’t.”...

4w

How to Write an Underdog Story Readers Will Cheer For

Everyone loves a good underdog story. In some ways, we can all relate to the downtrodden character who rises against insurmountable odds. And the requisite feel-good ending is as sweet and satisfying as a warm cup of cocoa at the end of a cold and bitter day. The underdog plot is a sure-fire recipe for a story readers can care about, invest in, and...

5w