Posts by Sean Glatch
Capturing the Art of Storytelling: Techniques & Tips
It is hard to describe the art of storytelling, but you know good storytelling it when you read it. You read a passage of prose and it raises your arm hairs, makes your blood tingle, gets your heart racing; suddenly you’re swept up in the experience of beautiful writing. Indeed, writers seem to possess a…
Read MoreHow to Write Flash Fiction Stories
Like a lightning strike, flash fiction stories can be over in an instant—radically altering the terrain of the reader’s imagination. These bite-sized stories take a lot of style, skill, and effective word choice to pull off. Many writers try to conquer the flash fiction form in their writing careers, but the short-short story requires lots…
Read MoreHow to Write a Poetry Book and Get It Published
Writing a poetry book requires courage, stamina, and a lot of patience with yourself. The poetry book ranks at the top of many poets’ to-do lists, but getting a manuscript in front of poetry book publishers takes years of writing and planning. This article covers the essentials of getting new poetry books into print, covering both…
Read MoreHow to Write a Memoir: Examples and a Step-by-Step Guide
If you’ve thought about putting your life to the page, you may have wondered how to write a memoir. We start the road to writing a memoir when we realize that a story in our lives demands to be told. As Maya Angelou once wrote, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story…
Read MoreWord Play: Examples of a Play on Words
It goes without saying that writers are drawn to language, but because we love words so much, the English language is filled with word play. By interrogating the complexities of language—homophones, homographs, words with multiple meanings, sentence structures, etc.—writers can explore new possibilities in their work through a play on words. It’s easiest to employ…
Read MoreHow to Come Up With Story Ideas
How do writers develop good story ideas? Sometimes, coming up with a story idea is the hardest part about writing fiction. Figuring out what to write about can be frustrating, as the desire to create meets the uncertainty surrounding where to begin. Writers are often taught how to write their stories, but not how to…
Read MoreCinquain Poetry: How to Write a Cinquain Poem
A cinquain is a stanza composed of five lines, which makes a cinquain poem a poem composed of five-line stanzas. These short poems are the perfect length to find insight through brevity, and if you’re considering tinkering with shorter poetry forms, you might want to play with cinquain poetry. What is a cinquain poem, and…
Read MoreThe 35 Best Gifts for Writers in Your Life
Professional authors chime in on gift ideas for writers—both during the holidays and any time of year. If you’re looking for the best gifts for writers in your life, look no further. There are lots of great gifts for creative writers—you just need to get in a writer’s head. With the help of some lovely…
Read MoreInciting Incident Definition: The “Why” of Fiction
“The inciting incident is how you get [your characters] to do something…. It’s the doorway through which they can’t return, you know. The story takes care of the rest.” —Donald Miller The inciting incident in a story plays a central role in that story’s structure. It provides the “push” that gets the story rolling—it sets…
Read MoreSymbolism in Literature: What Symbolism Is, and How to Use It In Your Writing
Symbolism describes the use of concrete images to convey abstract ideas. Because this literary device is widely open to interpretation, and because many readers form different relationships to concrete objects, this is one of the more slippery elements of literature to both understand and convey to an audience. Nonetheless, understanding symbolism, and knowing what is…
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