Writing Tips
What is Theme? A Look at 20 Common Themes in Literature
When someone asks you “What is this book about?”, there are a few ways you can answer. There’s “plot,” which refers to the literal events in the book, and there’s “character,” which refers to the people in the book and the struggles they overcome. Finally, there are themes in literature that correspond with the work’s…
Read MoreFlat Character vs. Round Character: Definitions and Examples
Every fictional person that populates books, movies, and plays falls into one of two categories: flat characters and round characters. Flat and round characters each fill important roles in works of fiction, and while this isn’t the only way to categorize fictional characters, it’s a useful distinction to help guide your own character writing. What…
Read MoreIrony Definition: Different Types of Irony in Literature
What is irony? Well, it’s like rain on your wedding day. It’s a free ride, when you’ve already paid. ’90s radio is helpful here. Okay; but what is irony? It can often be easier to point to specific ironies than to find a definition of irony itself that hits home. Irony involves contradiction of our…
Read MorePersona Poetry: How to Write a Persona Poem
Persona poems allow poets to inhabit the minds of other people and write from their perspectives. If you’ve ever wanted to get inside someone’s brain, crawl around in it for a while, and come to a deeper understanding of their psyche, you might want to learn how to write a persona poem. The persona poetry…
Read MoreHow to Write a Love Poem
Love poems have tried to capture the essence of love since the dawn of poetry itself. Because love is a highly personal and variable experience, no two love poets will approach the topic in quite the same way. As a result, a corpus of beautiful love poems has emerged throughout our many millennia of writing…
Read MoreWhat is Form in Poetry? 15 Poetic Forms to Try
The relationship between poetry forms and language cannot be overstated: with different forms of poetry, poets encounter new ways to grapple with complex poetic topics. Indeed, poets have played with form since the dawn of poetry, resulting in the countless forms of poetry that us poets have at our disposal. Understanding most forms is easy,…
Read MoreWhat is Purple Prose? The Case Against Overly Ornate Writing
Ah, purple prose: that ornate room of language: that jeweled scabbard with which the writer unsheaths their mightiest thoughts, decorated and aglitter in the light of passing eyes; so wrought with its own exigence, it twists the reader’s mind, so labyrinthine. If you didn’t understand that paragraph, I didn’t either. It’s not good writing, but…
Read MoreHow to Set SMART Writing Goals for 2023
Happy 2023! We hope this year will be full of writing for you—and if you’re like us, you’ve even got writing goals among your New Year’s Resolutions. One thing to consider is that not all goals are created equal. Goals can be fuzzy (“I want to write more”), over-ambitious, or have lots of other issues.…
Read MoreCreative Writing Feedback: How to Workshop Creative Writing
Writing workshops are a wonderful way to grow and expand your writing skills—provided you know how to workshop creative writing. There are different writing workshop models, both online and in person, each with their own particular ways of benefiting your writing journey. What are those models, and how do you engage in proper critique writing?…
Read MoreWriting Styles: What is Style in Writing?
Writing styles may be hard to define, but something separates Hemingway from Steinbeck, Atwood from LeGuin, or Keats from Wordsworth. Though two given writers might dwell on similar themes, every writer expresses a unique writing style, conveyed through elements like word choice, narrative structure, and the author’s own voice. But what is style in writing?…
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