Writing Tips
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Newest Articles
How to Improve Writing Skills for Creative and Professional Writers
Like anything else, writing is a skill that improves with practice. The more you do it, the better you get at it. This goes for writing literature, yes, but also writing emails, text messages, notes-to-self, and anything else we use language for. Whatever you need to write, this article covers how to improve writing skills…
Flash Nonfiction: The Craft of Tiny Truths
Flash nonfiction that combines the concision of flash fiction with the truth-seeking qualities of creative nonfiction. It is an emerging literary genre that seeks the full truth of something (typically) in under 1,000 words. By using as few words as possible to strike at the truth of something, flash nonfiction often leans into poetic language…
What is Free Indirect Discourse? Writing the “Intimate 3rd Person”
Are you writing a story from a third person perspective, but feeling boxed out of your characters’ minds? Fear not—writers have a solution for this, too, and it’s called free indirect discourse. Free indirect discourse is a narrative technique in which writers employ the third person point of view with the intimacy of a 1st…
From Our Instructors
Writing About Real People
Sneak Peek: This essay is excerpted from some of the materials I’ll be sharing in my class, “The Body and Soul of Your Memoir: Shape, Focus, and Write Your Memoir” at Writers.com starting October 21st. When my memoir, The Sky Begins At Your Feet: A Memoir on Cancer, Community and Coming Home to the Body,…
Learn to Write! 8 Tips on Learning How to Write
If you’re here, you want to learn to write—whether that’s poetry, fiction, nonfiction, or something in-between. Learning to write is a process, and it is something that writers learn and relearn throughout their lives. To quote Ernest Hemingway, “We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.” But anyone can…
How to Become a Poet
If you’re here, you’re wondering how to become a poet. The good news is, anyone can learn to write poetry—and if you’ve ever written a poem before, you can already call yourself a poet. Even so, sitting down to put feelings to stanzas can seem impossible. With so many possibilities to tinker with language, where…
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Writing Prompts
Jump-start your creativity with our writing prompts. Check back regularly for new prompts!
Show and Tell
Write a story or poem about an object with a lot of nostalgic value for you/the narrator. Do not, at any point, tell the reader explicitly what this object is.
Forgive and Forget
Write a story or poem about a time when you had to forget something to maintain a friendship or relationship.
Trash Day
Collect pieces of “junk writing”—spam emails, credit card advertisements, roadside billboards, bumper stickers, etc. Then, write a story or poem that uses all of the junk writing you collected.