Writing Forward newsletters

Here are the latest Writing Forward newsletters for my followers to peruse:

Writing Forward | Weekly Digest Excerpts: Creative Writing Prompts for Movie Lovers Today’s prompts are selected from the book 1200 Creative Writing Prompts. Enjoy! There’s nothing quite like sitting with a room full of strangers in a darkened movie theater. The air is filled with the smell of hot, buttered popcorn. Feet shuffle, chairs creak, and you can hear ice rattling around in plastic cups. The movie’s about […] Read on » How to Write Better Stories You know that feeling you get when you read a novel and become completely lost in it? You can’t put it down, so you lose track of time. When you finally finish, you wish it would just keep going. Isn’t that the kind of story you want to write? Over the past year, I’ve read […] Read on » Recent Articles: Poetry Writing Ideas and Activities Debunking Common Myths About Writing How to Develop Better Writing Habits Writing Tips: Writing is Rewriting Writing Resources: Telling True Stories   Share Tweet What's the Story? Building Blocks for Fiction Writing is available from your favorite online bookseller. Adventures in Writing: The Complete Collection 101 Creative Writing Exercises Copyright © 2018 Bookworms and Wordsmiths, All rights reserved.

Writing Forward | Weekly Digest Excerpts: Poetry Writing Ideas and Activities A poem can come out of nowhere and land on the page, fully formed, in just a few minutes. A poem can also be the result of hours (or weeks) of laboring over line breaks, word choices, images, and rhythm. Poems are funny little things, appearing out of nowhere and disappearing for no apparent reason. […] Read on » Debunking Common Myths About Writing Myths abound in the world of the arts, and writers are not immune to them. Many of us succumb to the fallacies that are floating around about what it means to be a writer or what it takes to become a writer. So what’s the matter with falling for myths about writing? Myths about writing […] Read on » Recent Articles: How to Develop Better Writing Habits Writing Tips: Writing is Rewriting Writing Resources: Telling True Stories Poetry Prompts for Paying Tribute Sneak Peek at Story Drills: Character Arcs   Share Tweet What's the Story? Building Blocks for Fiction Writing is available from your favorite online bookseller. Adventures in Writing: The Complete Collection 101 Creative Writing Exercises Copyright © 2018 Bookworms and Wordsmiths, All rights reserved.

Writing Forward | Weekly Digest Excerpts: How to Develop Better Writing Habits There’s only one way to become a better writer, and that is through lots of practice. Some people are born with talent. Writing comes easily to them, but even the most talented writers have to work at the craft. After all, nobody’s born knowing how to write. Fostering good writing habits accomplishes two things. First, […] Read on » Writing Tips: Writing is Rewriting Those of us who spend a lot of time studying the craft of writing inevitably come across bits of writing advice that we hear over and over again: show don’t tell, write what you know, and kill your darlings. These writing tips can be a bit cryptic, but the one about revisions is crystal clear: […] Read on » Recent Articles: Writing Resources: Telling True Stories Poetry Prompts for Paying Tribute Sneak Peek at Story Drills: Character Arcs Stock and Cloned Characters in Storytelling Poetry: Rhythm and Meter   Share Tweet What's the Story? Building Blocks for Fiction Writing is available from your favorite online bookseller. Adventures in Writing: The Complete Collection 101 Creative Writing Exercises Copyright © 2018 Bookworms and Wordsmiths, All rights reserved.

Writing Forward | Weekly Digest Excerpts: Writing Resources: Telling True Stories Human beings are built for story. Story is how we perceive the world around us and how we understand ourselves and other people. Through story, we learn and make connections. We use stories to map the future and study the past. Stories are the single most effective tools for education, communication, and persuasion, which is […] Read on » Poetry Prompts for Paying Tribute Writers have been expressing their feelings through poetry for centuries. Rant poems release anger, melancholy poems reveal sorrow, and love poems declare affection. Some poems are meant to make readers laugh. Other poems make people think. Tribute poems (or odes) express praise for the poem’s subject. Odes can be written to honor people, animals, objects, and abstract […] Read on » Recent Articles: Sneak Peek at Story Drills: Character Arcs Stock and Cloned Characters in Storytelling Poetry: Rhythm and Meter Grammar Rules: Capitalization Ten Myths About Creativity   Share Tweet What's the Story? Building Blocks for Fiction Writing is available from your favorite online bookseller. Adventures in Writing: The Complete Collection 101 Creative Writing Exercises Copyright © 2018 Bookworms and Wordsmiths, All rights reserved.

Writing Forward | Weekly Digest Excerpts: Poetry: Rhythm and Meter Rhythm is everywhere: we hear it in the hum of vehicles and appliances. We feel it when we walk or run. We see it in the very rising and setting of the sun. Even our hearts beat to a rhythm. Rhythm is built into the way we experience and perceive the world. Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary offers several […] Read on » Grammar Rules: Capitalization Proper capitalization is one of the cornerstones of good grammar, yet many people fling capital letters around carelessly. Not every word deserves to be capitalized. It’s an honor that must be warranted, and in writing, capitalization is reserved only for special words. Most of the grammar rules are explicit about which words should be capitalized. […] Read on » Recent Articles: Ten Myths About Creativity Whose Writing Advice Should You Follow? Writing Tips: Write What You Know Style Guides: Essential Writing Resources for Professionals 12 Nature-Inspired Creative Writing Prompts   Share Tweet What's the Story? Building Blocks for Fiction Writing is available from your favorite online bookseller. Adventures in Writing: The Complete Collection 101 Creative Writing Exercises Copyright © 2018 Bookworms and Wordsmiths, All rights reserved.

Writing Forward | Weekly Digest Excerpts: Sneak Peek at Story Drills: Character Arcs Today’s post offers a sneak peek at my forthcoming book, Story Drills: Fiction Writing Exercises for Building Storytelling Skills. This exercise examines character arcs. Enjoy! Character Arcs In storytelling, an arc is a path of transformation. A character arc is the journey that a character experiences throughout the course of a story, which leads to […] Read on » Stock and Cloned Characters in Storytelling I was recently reading a novel, and a few chapters in, I realized I had mixed up two of the main characters. In fact, I had been reading them as if they were a single character. I’m a pretty sharp reader, and this has never happened before, so I tried to determine why I’d made […] Read on » Recent Articles: Poetry: Rhythm and Meter Grammar Rules: Capitalization Ten Myths About Creativity Whose Writing Advice Should You Follow? Writing Tips: Write What You Know   Share Tweet What's the Story? Building Blocks for Fiction Writing is available from your favorite online bookseller. Adventures in Writing: The Complete Collection 101 Creative Writing Exercises Copyright © 2018 Bookworms and Wordsmiths, All rights reserved.

Writing Forward | Weekly Digest Excerpts: Writing Tips: Write What You Know A common piece of writing advice is write what you know. When I first heard this advice, I thought it was odd. I don’t remember where I first heard it, but I remember thinking that as far as writing tips went, it was absurd. What about writing from your imagination or your feelings? How do genres […] Read on » Style Guides: Essential Writing Resources for Professionals When we’re writing, we run into a lot of technical issues. Where do the quotation marks go? When is it correct to use a comma? How should titles be formatted? Some of these questions are answered by the rules of grammar, spelling, and punctuation. But other questions are not addressed by grammar: there’s no official […] Read on » Recent Articles: 12 Nature-Inspired Creative Writing Prompts From 101 Creative Writing Exercises: Haiku Archetypal Characters in Storytelling Poetry: Making Music with Words Keep Writing!   Share Tweet What's the Story? Building Blocks for Fiction Writing is available from your favorite online bookseller. Adventures in Writing: The Complete Collection 101 Creative Writing Exercises Copyright © 2018 Bookworms and Wordsmiths, All rights reserved

Writing Forward | Weekly Digest Excerpts: Keep Writing! When life gets hectic, it’s impossible to get your creative writing done. Inspiration might be knocking, but the house is so full, you’re not sure you can open the door and let it in. How can you keep writing? What if all you need is sixty seconds? We all have responsibilities to fulfill and obligations […] Read on » Can the Right Writing Tools Help You Write Better? When I first started writing, it was just me, a ninety-nine cent pen, and a cheap spiral-bound notebook. Using those tools, I wrote dozens of poems, stories, and journal entries. These days, I’m surrounded by far more sophisticated writing tools: fancy pens and journals, a computer with writing software, a library of writing resources, and […] Read on » Recent Articles: How to Critique Other Writers’ Work Writing Resources: Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones Poetry Prompts for Ranting and Raving Fiction Writing Exercises: Step Out of Your Shoes Story is Conflict   Share Tweet What's the Story? Building Blocks for Fiction Writing is available from your favorite online bookseller. Adventures in Writing: The Complete Collection 101 Creative Writing Exercises Copyright © 2018 Bookworms and Wordsmiths, All rights reserved.