• Dipping your toes into the writing world? Starting with a novel or nonfiction book can be overwhelming. Start small—here's how to write a short story!

    Start Small: How to Write a Short Story

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    If you’re just dipping your toes into the writing world, starting with a full-length novel or nonfiction book may feel overwhelming. Short stories allow you to get a feel for composing a story with a beginning, middle, and end. It also helps you tackle character development and a thorough plot structure without having to devote hundreds of hours to an 80,000-word manuscript. Short stories can also help pay attention to the complexities that come with the necessity of succinct word choice and help you hone your writing style and tone. The Basics of a Short Story Here are 5 simple…

  • How To Build Creative Confidence In Your Writing

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    I’ll let you in on a secret: writing is less about professional training and more about creative confidence. Anyone can string together a few decent sentences. The difference is that those with creative confidence will share their decent sentences with anyone and everyone, while other writers hide their work away from the world—proclaiming it isn’t good enough for public consumption. Don’t get me wrong, there is a difference between putting work out that hasn’t been revised, edited and proofread, and putting out work that you deem lesser than someone else’s work. Each time you negatively compare your work to another,…

  • Set the Scene for Writing Success

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    Most writers have a routine they like to follow, and bless your heart if you suggest changing it. Maybe you like to curl up on the couch with a notepad and pencil, or perhaps you have worn your imprint into the best seat at a coffee shop (you know the one: right next to an outlet, a table, and a window). Every now and then, though, it does the writer’s soul good to evaluate if your writing process is really working you, and find some easy solutions to shake it up a bit. 1.) What writing phase are you completing? It is no…

  • Subplots, ever heard of them? Essential to a good novel, here's how you can incorporate them with ease, and why you need to.

    How to Add Subplots to Your Novel and Why You Need Them

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    While your main plot is solely focused on your protagonist and his or her outcome, subplots serve as side stories to the main plot and tend to focus on secondary characters. Subplots should not overpower the main plot, but instead, strengthen the story and more develop the theme of your novel. The How While short stories or children’s books under 8,000 words rely on a basic, linear plot structure (one plotline), any story over that 8,000-word mark should have one or more subplots (depending on the story’s length) woven into it. Treat each subplot as a mini-story, meaning they need…