Think back to a time when…
Think back to a time when all your hopes and dreams were dashed. Now focus that bitterness into a scene and let your reader feel it.
Monthly Archive: December 2020
Something nostalgic…
Write a scene in which a character encounters something that makes them feel nostalgic. Be sure to include emotive descriptions and specific details to help elicit a similar emotional response in your reader.
Interview with Molly Pohlig
Molly Pohlig, celebrated breakout author of The Unsuitable, talks to us about what it takes to get published during a pandemic and why, if you love writing, you should keep doing it.
A washed-up detective…
Create a piece of flash fiction centered around a gritty, washed up, short-fused detective who accidentally stumbles upon a lost child. The problem (other than this detective’s natural dislike for children)? The detective was just fired for their long history of using excessive force and breaking the rules.
Using one-sided dialogue…
Using dialogue only, write a conversation between two people, one of whom is apologizing for screwing up. But instead of presenting the dialogue of both participants, only show your reader what one of them is saying.
The Dialogue Tag Controversy
They said there was a right way to write dialogue tags. Then they screamed that there wasn’t. The truth about this highly controversial topic lies somewhere in between. Here are our tips and tricks for writing strong conversations, however you choose to tag them.
Describe a snowstorm without using…
Write a one-paragraph description about a character walking through a brutal snowstorm. But do it without using any variations of the words freezing, cold, bitter, or numb.
Write a story about a unicorn…
For this writing prompt, write a story about a unicorn using these guidelines: The unicorn’s name is Malakai; He is fantastic (whatever that means to you); And he is lost in a world he knows nothing about.
21 Questions to Ask Your Character
The key to writing engaging, hard-to-forget characters is to truly get to know them before you even begin plotting your story. Here are 21 questions to help you get there.
Interview with June Hur
We spoke with June Hur, breakout author of The Silence of Bones, about her journey to getting published and what she learned about the writing process and herself along the way.