Italics, quotation marks, underlines, plain old capital letters—when it comes to writing titles, the rules can feel like a confusing mess. Do you italicize book titles? What about movie titles? And for goodness’ sake, what should you do with pesky things like TV shows, short stories, or YouTube videos? With so many different kinds of […]

If you want to know how to be a successful author, it starts with knowing you’re a writer. But there’s a difference between being a professional writer and a hobbyist. Professional writers publish for a specific audience, and they publish often. Hobbyists write for themselves, and there’s nothing wrong with that. If you’re aiming to […]

A common and consistent point of feedback we hear from employees when auditing a company’s internal communications can be distilled into just two words: “email overload.” Across industries and sectors, companies large or small, employees are often quick to share that they feel they receive too many emails. And yet, emails are among the most […]

The horror genre might call to mind slasher films or other monster movies your teenage friends made you watch at night to scare you out of your wits. But horror is more than a shock fest. Scary stories have the ability to reveal the human condition in ways many other genres cannot. Today let’s look […]

We’ve been looking at the ten types of stories, and next up is horror—survival stories where a character is facing a fate worse than death. What’s worse than death? Fear. We hope today’s horror story prompts will inspire some truly terrifying tales. Ten Types of Stories and The Horror Story We’ve been studying the ten […]

No matter what kind of fiction (or even memoir!) you write, you’re going to need to do some world building, even if it is just to capture the daily life of something that happened in actual history. But what is world building and what elements do you need to include to do it effectively? Today, […]

Screech! Hold up. Did you hear that? Boom! No, not that. Ring-ring. Not that either. Moo. There it is. That is the sound of onomatopoeia, one of the most fun words to spell in the English language, and if you want to know how to write sounds, an absolutely essential literary device. How does onomatopoeia […]

Have you ever started writing a book with a burst of energy and enthusiasm? For a time, your fingers were flying off the keyboards, and then somewhere in the manuscript…they stopped. Have you ever become a victim to writer’s burnout? At some point in the writing process, every writer feels exhausted. It’s hard work writing […]

Ever wondered how to write a thriller novel? The name pretty much says it all, right? The defining characteristic of a thriller is that it thrills. It grabs a reader by the throat, propels him along, and doesn’t let go until the story ends. And sometimes, not even then. A thriller is not just a […]

One of the best benefits of reading suspense fiction is that you become an active participant—processing mystery clues, solving puzzles, anticipating outcomes. But as a mystery, suspense, and thriller writer, how can you successfully give this interactive type of experience to your readers? How do you know which clues and red herrings to plant? How […]