Search Results for: books for writers

  • 6 Bad Habits to Give Up This Month as a Writer

    If you participate in Lent, you’re accustomed to giving up certain things—chocolate, social media, soda—in your life during the 40-day period. As a writer, however, there are also some negative habits you should give up, too. So, with the last few weeks left of Lent, refocus on these six habits you can remove from your writing life.  1. Comparison. We all get caught in the comparison game at some point or another, and as a writer, it can be hard not to compare your current writing status with someone else’s status, especially with access to other writers’ lives on social…

  • What’s a Style Guide and Which One Should I Use?

    What are Style Guides? It can get downright confusing to remember all the writing rules set in place centuries ago. That’s where style guides come in handy; a style guide is a manual that details the standards for writing, designing, and publishing various publications. There are many types of industries publishing materials within their area of expertise. Style guides are specifically created to keep writers, editors, and designers on the same page when working on a project. In your high school and college English classes, you most likely used a style called MLA, or The Modern Language Association Handbook. If you’ve done…

  • How to Develop Your Characters

    When it comes to developing characters, first-time writers often fall into two camps. The first camp doesn’t focus on creating character profile sheets and instead just wings it during their writing. The second camp thinks that a character should be as close to perfect humans as the writer can get them. Both of these can lead to very flat—somewhat boring—characters because they lack depth. The secret to developing a character that is strong, well-rounded, interesting is grittiness. Every single character needs some negative traits, some traits that make them stand out from others, and traits that make them feel human.…

  • 10 Ways to Prepare for NaNoWriMo

    We’re a few weeks out from the biggest novel writing challenge of the year: National Novel Writing Month! Every November, writers from around the world dedicate themselves to cranking out a 50,000-word first draft manuscript in 30 days. Tons of writers have gone on to publish their books after the challenge, and thousands have credited the process to help them finish a writing project that’s been sitting on their hearts for years. If this is the year you’ve decided to write your novel, you still have plenty of time to finish the first draft before the end of the year,…