Nonfiction Children’s Books
Find your niche in the nonfiction children’s book market using these timely takeaways.
How To Be More Intentional With Chapter Structure
Chapter structure, like plot structure, is key to achieving a believable and engaging narrative. Here’s how to make sure your chapters are complete and doing as much work for you and your story as possible.
Novel Openings
Go beyond the landscape when setting the scene with these three essential considerations for starting your novel.
How to Write
Here's an energizing pep talk on how to write, including the ingredients you need to get started and keep going.
Help! I’m Distracted from Writing.
Getting distracted from writing has always been a challenge for writers. But it’s more acute these days, as lockdowns and quarantines interfere with the habits we once built. Here are the top four ways we tend to get distracted from writing, with troubleshooting solutions for each.
Write What You Know
Here's a video follow-up to our blog post on the old writing adage "write what you know." A closer look at what this expression really means and how you can make it work in your writing.
Writing Secondary Characters
Even though narratives tend to focus on the life of one character – sometimes a few in multiple POV – the people in that character’s life are equally important. Giving them personalities, sometimes backstories and arcs of their own, are what make the narrative as a whole more realistic.
Descriptive Writing Tips
These descriptive writing tips will help you create impactful imagery that supports your story.
Trust Your Reader
Among popular bits of advice—create empathetic characters, avoid rhetorical questions, try starting with an outline—“trust your reader” is often overlooked. Here’s how to trust your reader to understand what you’re trying to show.
Novel Series
Writing a novel series? Here are some valuable tips on planning and executing your series, as well as how to pitch it to publishers.
Rethinking Writing Productivity
Writing productivity is especially relevant this time of year, when we’re thinking about how to squeeze the very most out of our days. For many writers, the festive season is when we’re juggling day jobs, family, holiday preparations, and—oh, yeah—writing.
Nonfiction Article Vs Book
Do you have an idea for a nonfiction project? Ask yourself these questions before deciding if your idea is book-worthy, or if it makes more sense as an article.
Passive Character
It's hard for readers to engage with a passive character, especially in the protagonist role. Here's why.
Kill Your Darlings
As writers, we all have perceived strengths we fall back on time and time again. But can over-reliance on your strengths actually weaken your manuscript?
Low Writing Confidence and Ways to Shift Your Mindset
Struggling with writing confidence? You’re not alone. Lots of writers, including myself, experience self-doubt. Let’s look at some factors that may impact your writing confidence, and some suggested mindset shifts to help you work around the self-doubt.
Need Writing Inspiration? Try Adding Top Gun
We’re all in need of a little writing inspiration right now. With all of the tumult in our lives, putting effort into creative projects seems both more important and more impossible. How can we mentally move beyond the walls that confine us to create new and interesting work? How can we find writing inspiration, talking to the same people every day in the same spaces?
How to Use a Critique Group
To level up your writing, find a critique group. If you’re struggling to get past the first chapter, or you run out of interest midway through a project, a critique group could be essential. Getting feedback is invaluable, of course, but the benefits of joining a critique group don’t stop there.
Writing During Quarantine: Focus, and Create Bravely
How do we focus on writing during quarantine? Here are some tips to help you get the most out of your writing life during these challenging times.
Turning Anxiety Into Creativity
As the COVID-19 news around the world becomes steadily more serious, we wanted to share some tips and tricks to help you turn anxiety into creativity, and chaos into opportunity.
The Problem With Boy Books and Girl Books
What’s a writer to do? When you feel like you should write a “girl book” because it’s all you’ve written before? When girls are your audience, do you dare branch out and try to reach boy readers? What if that affects your sales? Your school visits? Your future?