Writing Techniques

Most popular posts

A hand with credit card in-hand and a laptop open suggests spending on amazon marketing services in a light and positive tone armed with the information of this article

Amazon Marketing Services Explained: Beginner’s Guide to Amazon Ads

You’ve completed your manuscript. You’ve gone through revision and editing. You’ve nailed down the cover and written a blurb you’re...

How to Title a Book That Readers Can’t Ignore

How to title your book is one of the smallest writing problems with potentially the largest consequence. You have lived...

When the Main Character is the Villain

Have you considered writing a story where your main character is the villain? You might think, “But doesn’t my protagonist...

A lion in the Serengeti depicted here to convey a visual of the ruler archetype as naturally alluded in folk story

The Ruler Archetype: Writing the Character Who Holds the World Together or Tears It Apart

When a Ruler archetype character enters a room, the atmosphere instantly changes. Not because of what they say or do,...

Four books are sat up in hand together and all look similar to another to suggest the four stages of editing the same book, a parallel for book editing

The 4 Stages of Book Editing 

You finished a polished draft of your manuscript. Congratulations! That is a huge accomplishment, and I’m going to tell you...

A featured image for a list of strengths conveys a visualization of physical strength as one quality among many for the protagonist to have

List of Strengths for Character Development: Creating Characters Readers Remember

Writers instinctively know that a character’s flaws drive the story, that the crack in a character’s foundation is what the...

A magnifying glass held up to a piece of writing suggests a close examination of work to observe its subtext
Blog
Alan Watt

What is Subtext?

For writers, implying subtext can be difficult, but it is also essential. The challenge lies in knowing what needs to be said

Read More »
Motorcyclists on a curved track conveys the fast-paced action of a story following the fichtean curve
Blog
Alan Watt

The Fichtean Curve

The Fichtean Curve takes a different approach from other story structure models. Most structure templates take a little time to establish the

Read More »
A woman yawns at her desk to suggest that passive voice misuse makes her very sleepy
Blog
Alan Watt

Passive Voice Misuse

You may have heard the conventional wisdom that passive voice misuse means it should be stricken from your writing entirely. While it

Read More »
A sign says please do not use quotation marks for emphasis to humorously suggest that quoting poems correctly is quite important
Blog
Alan Watt

How to Quote a Poem 

Writers often quote a poem within their own work. This can help to set the tone, build deeper thematic connections, or key

Read More »
An image of the painting by Muntz Lyall - Interesting Story - to make the authors reading this post feel that story structure is accessible, native, and important for readers of any gender or age to enjoy their work
Blog
Alan Watt

Story Structure

Think of story structure as the skeleton of your tale. We all have different lives, different styles, different appearances. But for the

Read More »
A woman is being chased by a stork in a picture used to represent historical fiction and the many ways it creates powerful images for readers.
Blog
Alan Watt

Historical Fiction

If you’ve found yourself enchanted by tales of a bygone era, you’re likely a fan of historical fiction.  In this genre, the

Read More »
Every writer wants to know how to write faster, a race car visualizes how you may speed up your process in time
Blog
Alan Watt

How to Write Faster

Every writer at one time or another thinks: I need to write faster. The page is blank. The clock is ticking. And

Read More »
Featured image for flash fiction. It's fast, it's fun, and it's meant to go by in a blur. Hopefully the intention and quickness you embrace in the simplicity brings you closer to the writing and it evokes feelings of this image as a writer
Blog
Alan Watt

Flash Fiction

If you want to become a better writer, flash fiction is a powerful way to strengthen your storytelling muscles. Flash fiction is

Read More »
A nondescript white woman paints a realistic image of hands for the blog realistic fiction. perhaps the writer reading the article may be able to imagine themselves as a painter making something realistic too
Blog
Alan Watt

Realistic Fiction

There’s a particular kind of courage in writing about the world as it actually is. Although our imaginations can take us to

Read More »

Recent posts

Someone sits by a marked up sheet of music to suggest what is rhythm in writing

What is Rhythm? How to Bring Your Writing to Life

Rhythm is one of those craft issues that writers talk around without really discussing. They might lump it in with...

A woman at attention watching someone perform in the foreground and a captive audience behind her suggest the way to write a cumulative sentence that would pull an audience in.

The Cumulative Sentence: How to Write Lines that Pull Readers In

The cumulative sentence is a versatile sentence structure that helps writers develop rhythm, reveal character, and enrich description within a...

A travel guide in the center of frame telling everyone else about something passionately as a visual metaphor for how writers can use dialogue tags in their storytelling

Dialogue Tags: The Art of Guiding Conversation 

Dialogue tags are essential to keeping up the illusion of storytelling. Dialogue ceases to be words on a page, and...

A painterly illustration of the scapegoat to suggest an approach to writing one effectively in literature

The Scapegoat: Why Your Characters Need Someone to Blame

Typically, we view a scapegoat simply as a plot device — an innocent bystander blamed for a criminal act, or...

A series of scrabble tiles placed on a plain white sheet of paper to suggest the fun of choosing effective descriptive adjectives

Descriptive Adjectives: Choosing Words That Create Emotion  

Almost every writer has, at some point, re-read something they worked hard on and realized it wasn’t quite right. It...

Image of the Egyptian God Thoth — representative of the third person objective point of view in myth

Third Person Objective – Point of View

Previously, I went over third person omniscient and third person limited points of view. There’s one more to consider: third...

A magnifying glass held up to a piece of writing suggests a close examination of work to observe its subtext

What is Subtext?

For writers, implying subtext can be difficult, but it is also essential. The challenge lies in knowing what needs to...

Motorcyclists on a curved track conveys the fast-paced action of a story following the fichtean curve

The Fichtean Curve

The Fichtean Curve takes a different approach from other story structure models. Most structure templates take a little time to...

A woman yawns at her desk to suggest that passive voice misuse makes her very sleepy

Passive Voice Misuse

You may have heard the conventional wisdom that passive voice misuse means it should be stricken from your writing entirely....

A sign says please do not use quotation marks for emphasis to humorously suggest that quoting poems correctly is quite important

How to Quote a Poem 

Writers often quote a poem within their own work. This can help to set the tone, build deeper thematic connections,...

A picture of a comic panel where someone bursts into a room with a word description to help understand what is onomatopoeia

What is Onomatopoeia? How Sound Brings Your Writing to Life 

As a writer, your goal is to keep your readers immersed by drawing them into the world your characters inhabit....

An image of the painting by Muntz Lyall - Interesting Story - to make the authors reading this post feel that story structure is accessible, native, and important for readers of any gender or age to enjoy their work

Story Structure

Think of story structure as the skeleton of your tale. We all have different lives, different styles, different appearances. But...

A woman is being chased by a stork in a picture used to represent historical fiction and the many ways it creates powerful images for readers.

Historical Fiction

If you’ve found yourself enchanted by tales of a bygone era, you’re likely a fan of historical fiction.  In this...

Every writer wants to know how to write faster, a race car visualizes how you may speed up your process in time

How to Write Faster

Every writer at one time or another thinks: I need to write faster. The page is blank. The clock is...

Pictured: a café that has a sign out front that employs alliteration and immediately evokes a strong feeling that answers any reader who asks the question: "What is alliteration?"

What Is Alliteration? (And How to Use It in Your Writing)

One of the best pieces of writing advice I ever got was: read your work aloud. When you do, you...

A child feeling sand for the first time is one of the images we understand to be evocative of sensory details.

How to Use Sensory Details in Your Story

Your goal as a writer is to immerse your readers fully in your story, to help them experience what it...

Featured image for flash fiction. It's fast, it's fun, and it's meant to go by in a blur. Hopefully the intention and quickness you embrace in the simplicity brings you closer to the writing and it evokes feelings of this image as a writer

Flash Fiction

If you want to become a better writer, flash fiction is a powerful way to strengthen your storytelling muscles. Flash...

A nondescript white woman paints a realistic image of hands for the blog realistic fiction. perhaps the writer reading the article may be able to imagine themselves as a painter making something realistic too

Realistic Fiction

There’s a particular kind of courage in writing about the world as it actually is. Although our imaginations can take...