The article How Characters Change in Stories (And How to Write Believable Change) appeared first on The Write Practice. You’ve probably heard this piece of writing advice before: Your character must change throughout the course of your story. Characters need to transform. But how do we do it in a way that stays true to the story and reader? I see a lot of confusion over this concept of transformation. Writers can normally nail the change (weak to strong; bad to good; cynical to optimistic), but it often comes from a weird place that doesn’t sit quite right with what we know about the protagon ..read more

The article When It’s Time to Start Over appeared first on The Write Practice. How many of you have been writing for a while? Have a story that you just can't seem to finish? This article is for you—though if you're brand-new, this will eventually apply to you, too. Ahem. There will come a day when it's time to start that story over from scratch. Let me explain. How I Learned It Was Time to Start Over I have a book I've been working on since 2007. In the meantime, I've successfully published several other books, but I keep going back to this one because it's my baby. It's the life-s ..read more

The article Story Arcs: Definitions and Examples of the 6 Shapes of Stories appeared first on The Write Practice. In life, it can feel like things happen randomly, without causation, and with little or no meaning. The human brain, though, needs meaning. We need to understand why things are going badly for us so we can avoid it or why things are going well, so we can do more of whatever’s working. This is why humans love story, because stories give us a sense of purpose, meaning, and shape, and they do that through story arcs. In stories, we get to see the cause-and-effect connections between ..read more

The article Sympathetic Character: 10 Writing Techniques That Make Readers Care appeared first on The Write Practice. Recall a time you made an effort to get someone to like you. Did you try to get them to relate to you, or want to spend more time with you? It’s kind of the same way with the main character in your book. Readers finish books when they care about what happens to the protagonist. To accomplish this, you need to craft a sympathetic character. When you write a book, you’re asking readers to invite your character into their homes, their hangouts, their lives. It’s important to crea ..read more

The article How to Use Three-Act Structure to Write a Story Readers Can’t Put Down appeared first on The Write Practice. If you're struggling to write stories your readers will love, you're not alone. We talk a lot about structure here at the Write Practice as a way to help you get your stories told. Today, we'll look at another model you can use to write stories that actually work: 3-Act Story Structure. Every story begins as an idea. The work of a writer is to take that idea, in all its complexity, and translate it into a story. Ideas always feel fully formed in our minds, but when we sit d ..read more

The article Situational Irony: 3 Steps to Surprise Your Readers With Ironic Twists appeared first on The Write Practice. So, you've figured out how to write a story that works. You know you need a character, in a setting, with a problem. You know you need a series of try/fail cycles, followed by a climactic scene and the resolution or denouement. The structure is simple, but it's not always easy, and how do you keep reader's guessing without getting off track? Try infusing your story with some situational irony. In particular, it can be challenging to sustain and escalate the story's momentum ..read more

The article AI Story Generators: Top Tools and Best Practices for Fiction appeared first on The Write Practice. Have you seen the social media buzz about AI story generators and other artificial intelligence writing software like ChatGPT that produce writing? The use of AI has prompted a discussion about how we develop writing from story ideas to various types of content—even research papers. But can AI help writers craft compelling stories? Today we have a guest post from Navkiran Singh, a writer and software engineer who taught his teenage sister how to use AI story generator tools to help ..read more

The article Character Description: 6 Tips from Stephen King’s Memoir appeared first on The Write Practice. When we read books with characters we love, we can learn how to write our own characters by studying what details the writers included. Which details do you need? Let's look at the advice Stephen King gives in his book On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft about good description and apply it to two examples of character description: Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games and Harry Potter in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. 6 Tips on Writing Exciting Character Description When you write a ..read more

The article Writing a Book Outline: 5 Essential Sections That Build a Solid Story appeared first on The Write Practice. It's hard work to write an entire book. However, you can make your writing process a lot easier if you commit to writing a book outline before you tackle the actual writing. But what if you're resistant to writing a book outline? Maybe you're afraid that you'll dread each writing session if planning becomes a dominant part of the process. There are a lot of writing tips online instructing you on how to build the best outline for your book idea, whether or not it's your first ..read more

The article ProWritingAid Review: Will This Grammar Checker Fix Your Writing Issues? appeared first on The Write Practice. ProWritingAid is a grammar checker and style editor meant to help you improve your writing and become a better writer. How does it work? And would it be a useful tool for you? I tested it to find out, and I’ll break it all down for you in this ProWritingAid review. Want to see ProWritingAid in action? Click here to learn more. If you’ve ever written any piece of writing, you know that grammar mistakes are inevitable. They happen to the best of us: from pesky typos to no ..read more