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Prevent your readers from boredom by using descriptive writing. Word Painting has descriptive writing techniques, writing exercises, and more tips to keep your readers engaged. Read more

If you find yourself having a difficult time sustaining one tone over a long work, try these three tricks. Read more

Any story or novel is, in essence, a series of scenes strung together like beads on a wire, with narrative summary adding texture and color between. A work of fiction will comprise many scenes, and each one of these individual scenes must be built with a structure most easily described as having a beginning, middle and end. The beginning of each scene is what we’ll address here. Read more

Often when we feel something is missing from a piece of writing, the key lies in examining the tone. Here’s how to revise your work so that it resonates. Read more

Can a virtual critique group really be as good as meeting face to face? If you make the most of the format, it could be even better. Here’s how. Read more

A how-to is written as a sequence—first you do this, and then you do this. The essential question the writer asks herself when writing a how-to is, “What happens next?” If you are about to embark on a how-to, start at what you consider the beginning, and just keep answering that question over and over again. Before you know it, you will have sketched out a draft of a how-to article. Read more

If you find yourself having a difficult time sustaining one tone over a long work, try these three tricks. Find a paragraph that sounds exactly the way you want to sound for … Read more

Three of the most popular writers on story structure will come together this November 3-6 in Houston, Texas, for an intensive three-and-a-half day workshop called “Story Masters”. As a preview, we asked them the following questions. Read more