Building character at this level requires deep exploration of their history, their relationships and their deepest feelings. It requires thinking about your character’s biggest terrors and fears, their secrets and lies. To truly know your characters, you have to know how they act under pressure, cope when things are hard and express themselves.

This live webinar will help you tap into the unique attitudes and judgments of your characters and use that to shape strong voice, powerful character agency that helps you tell a compelling story.

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If you want more online education, see the full list of WDU courses here.

Enter Your Story #140!

Prompt: Write a short story of 650 words or fewer based on the photo prompt above. You can be poignant, funny, witty, etc.; it is, after all, your story.

Email your submission to yourstorycontest@aimmedia.com with the subject line “Your Story 140.”

Click here for more information.

Join Writer’s Digest in Tuscany!

Escape to the peaceful Tuscan countryside to spend a week dedicated to making time for writing, improving your craft, and learning from publishing professionals, all while enjoying a taste of Italy!

Tour Dates

April 7 – April 14, 2026

Tour Includes

• 2 nights in Florence 
• 5 nights on a nature reserve in the hills of Tuscany, an 1,100-acre organic farm, Tenuta di Spannocchia 
• All breakfasts, 5 dinners, and 5 lunches 
• Coach transportation to and from Spannocchia 
• Farm tour, a pasta making class, and a day trip to Siena 
• Friendly and knowledgeable local tour guide 
• Dedicated writing time, instruction, and 1-1 coaching in the scenic Tuscan countryside

Click here for more information and for where to register today.

The post Build Strong Characters With Attitude appeared first on Writer's Digest.

This intensive and information-filled 120-minute live webinar helps you think like an industry insider who makes decisions every day on what work merits print publication. You’ll get practical advice and tools to help you develop strong pitch letters and proposal materials for both fiction and nonfiction-plus back-door methods for networking with agents and editors.

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If you want more online education, see the full list of WDU courses here.

Enter the Writer’s Digest Poetry Awards!

Writer’s Digest is celebrating our 20th Annual Writer’s Digest Poetry Awards with new categories and prizes. We’re looking for your best poems of 32 lines or fewer or un-published chapbooks 25 pages or fewer. Any form of poetry is eligible including epic, free verse, odes, pantoums, sonnets, villanelles, and even haiku. This is the only Writer’s Digest competition exclusively for poets. Win cash and an article about you in the July/August issue of Writer’s Digest.

Deadline: December 1, 2025. New Categories and Prizes!

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Join Writer’s Digest VIP Membership!

Regardless of where you are on your writer’s journey, Writer’s Digest can help you achieve your goals. Writer’s Digest VIP Membership is a treasure trove of writing resources designed to inspire and empower you at every stage of your journey. It’s the one-stop destination for information, online learning, in-depth resources, and a unique writing community. VIP membership equips you to develop your craft, hone personal skills and publishing acumen, and achieve your goals.

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The post Land a Book Deal in 2026 appeared first on Writer's Digest.

This 90-minute workshop will show you what you need to know to determine what kind of edit you need; how to find reputable, experienced professionals; how to pick the right editor for you and what you can expect of your working relationship; as well as other options if hiring an editor isn’t in your budget right now.

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If you want more online education, see the full list of WDU courses here.

Last Chance: Register for the Media Savvy Author Boot Camp!

In this two-week bootcamp, Emmy Award–winning media strategist and bestselling author Paula Rizzo will help you assess your current platform, imagine what’s possible, and develop a plan that fits your life and goals.

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The 2025 November PAD Chapbook Challenge Has Started!

Announcing the guidelines for the 18th annual November PAD (Poem-A-Day) Chapbook Challenge! Join other poets to write and collect poems!

Click here for the guidelines.

Join Writer’s Digest VIP Membership!

Regardless of where you are on your writer’s journey, Writer’s Digest can help you achieve your goals. Writer’s Digest VIP Membership is a treasure trove of writing resources designed to inspire and empower you at every stage of your journey. It’s the one-stop destination for information, online learning, in-depth resources, and a unique writing community. VIP membership equips you to develop your craft, hone personal skills and publishing acumen, and achieve your goals.

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The post Get it Edited: When to Call in the Pros appeared first on Writer's Digest.

In Flash to a Novel, learn to write powerful, emotionally resonant flash fiction for submission to journals and acquire the skills to build a novel through the meticulous selection and accumulation of details while embracing the process of discovery.

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If you want more online education, see the full list of WDU courses here.

Vote For Your Story #138!

Out of nearly 100 entries, WD editors chose the following seven finalists from the Your Story 138 photo prompt.

Vote for your favorite using the comments section at the bottom of this link.

Enter Your Story #139!

Write the opening line to a story based on the photo prompt below. (One sentence only.) You can be poignant, funny, witty, etc.; it is, after all, your story. Email your submission to yourstorycontest@aimmedia.com with the subject line “Your Story 139.”

Click here for more information.

Listen to “Writer’s Digest Presents” Now!

In this episode of “Writer’s Digest Presents,” we’re chatting with author Carson Faust about writing southern gothic fiction, his debut novel If the Dead Belong Here, how to perfect styles of writing you admire as a reader, and more. Listen wherever you stream podcasts, or below.

The post From Flash Fiction to Novel Writing appeared first on Writer's Digest.

(10 Walt Whitman Quotes for Writers.)

Whitman began with himself, his body, and expanded onward and outward in widening circles. “I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journeywork of the stars.” Notice the pronoun and the noun phrases (the I, the leaf of grass, and the journeywork of the stars) that form one inextricable union. Most modern physicists would validate Whitman’s findings. There are no strangers between here and the stars. 

I learn from Whitman and others to create movement or tension by making leaps from ordinary consciousness, the visible and seemingly solid world, to the world always in flux and mostly unseen. In my forthcoming novel, The Wire-Walker, Amal Tuqan, a 16-year-old wire-walker, lives in “an alley so narrow the walls hold their breath.” The walls, made of stone, are alive, but they have no room to breathe, nor does Amal. She must break free of her confinement, but how?

Self-taught, lacking the equipment of a professional wire-walker, she makes do with the gift of her body. “I would like to have a long balance pole like Phillippe Petit,” she writes, “a great wire-walker I have studied on YouTube. Instead, I have my arms (I think of them as wings), and something else. Does a body stop where the skin stops? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. If I walk well, careful and quiet, I can feel all around me the shape of the air, the sky, and I grow larger than myself. Something I can’t name, something shiny, moves inside me and beyond me. If people say I’m small, it’s because their eyes are small. All they see is some skin that slips over me like a stocking. They’re missing the light around the body, the part of me no one can harm. The calmer I am, the shinier I am. I believe Phillippe Petit and other great aerialists would know what I mean.”

Amal is a study of contrasts. She weighs 42 kilos. The light around her weighs nothing. On the highwire, she applies a laser-like focus to walk a path through the sky while remaining aware of the whole sky, the void on either side of her body, the sun or stars above, the earth below. “When I practice or perform,” she tells us, “I take one step, just one, now another, another, because all the way across, at each juncture, there is only one.”

Is writing a novel any different? I monitor the speech or actions of characters and record one word at a time, now another, another, until a book is complete. But writing is not a linear process, nor is the art of wire-walking.

Day after day, Amal challenges herself, tests her limits to find new limits, and failure is integral to the process. “Sometimes,” she writes, “even a bird falls to earth and must shake the dust from her feathers before she can rise.” During practice, she asks a friend to shake the wire she walks on as though a great wind is blowing. Amal falls many times before she masters the art of walking as through a storm. She revises and adjusts, just as a writer—word by word––writes draft after draft to prepare a manuscript for publication.

Issa wrote: “Climb Mount Fuji,/ O snail,/ but slowly, slowly.” Revision is the process of paring away the words that lack a pulse, that have no connection to the body and to the earth.

Every sentient being moves and breathes. Works of fiction that mirror lived experience, or verisimilitude of experience, must do the same to come alive on the page. Nonetheless, to emphasize the importance of movement with no reference to its counterpart––stillness––would be amiss. To let the body lead doesn’t mean that a manuscript should be jam-packed with action, fast food for adrenaline junkies. A mind concentrated, a body alert and receptive, adds depth and complexity to the story. A novel worth reading is a highwire act.

“The hardest thing to learn,” says Amal, “is stillness on the wire, or even on earth. If I could learn stillness, I would master everything else. I wonder, though, must there be movement while we live? The nearest I come to stillness is when the breath I breathe for everyone vanishes in light.”

Amal is the greatest wire-walker in the Middle East.

Check out James Janko’s The Wire-Walker here:

Bookshop | Amazon

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The post Letting the Body Lead: Writing Movement, Gesture, and Tension on the Page appeared first on Writer's Digest.

It lasted less than 24 hours.

(Where the Books Wait: A Library Love Letter.)

The next morning I woke up feeling creatively frustrated. I know this feeling well; it’s the sign that there’s another story I need to write. I just need to begin the hard work of finding it. I needed to start a new book, but I couldn’t remember how. This forgetfulness happens to me every single time I finish a book. It’s as though, in the act of writing the final words of one story, I somehow overwrite my knowledge of how to begin another one.

Then a little bit of the fog cleared, and I remembered: I needed to go to my public library.

It’s not surprising that my thoughts would turn to the library, since The Library of Curiosities, my latest middle-grade novel about a family who collects magical objects, occurs in a library setting. For me libraries have always seemed like magical places, and have been a source of great inspiration. In fact, my local library was one of my first stops years ago when I finally, finally, decided to give this writing life a try.

After all, when you step into a library, you’re not just walking into a warehouse filled with books. You’re entering into a cathedral of dreams come true. You’re standing in the company of creators—both past and present—their artistic offerings to this world bound-up in the form of printed pages. It’s a sacred space that houses fine art, better (in my humble opinion) than any museum ever could be, because in a library you can actually take the art home with you for your own personal enjoyment and learning.

So, this past spring, when I was feeling unable to start, unable to begin again, I took myself to my local library. I browsed the shelves. I breathed in the hushed atmosphere, and the scent of paper and published dreams. I reminded myself that before each one of these books existed there was a writer with only a dream in their heart. A writer who may not have known where to start. Or how to start. But somehow, step by step, they figured it out.

And if they could figure it out, so could I. Again.

I began plucking books off the shelves. Books are dreams come true, yes; but they are also a guidebook. Every single one of them is a master text other writers can learn from. I allowed myself to feel motivated by all the different premises and genres. So many books; so many different stories. So many different voices to tell them and I let myself be reminded that if there was room here on the shelves for these voices there would be room for mine as well.

I paid attention to what stood out to me. If I liked the way an author handled setting, that book went into my tote bag to check out. Same for authors who had mastered other aspects of fiction I admired: tone and mood, point of view, dialogue, and the like. Of all the ways I have pursued the craft of writing fiction—everything from attending one-day workshops to going back to school to obtain my MFA in Creative Writing—the single most helpful thing I’ve ever done is read other writers’ words. My budget won’t ever be able to keep pace with my appetite for books; luckily, my local library is always there for me, day after day, year after year.

It’s been a couple months since that day, and I have returned to the library many times in search of training and inspiration. On any given day I can’t tell you how many library books I have strewn around my house, but I can tell you it’s 30 or under, my library’s check-out limit—an unfortunate downgrade from the pre-pandemic limit of 50. Nevertheless, each time I pick one up, I’m reminded that I’m not just holding a book, I’m holding someone’s dream come true.

Right now I’m still in the very beginning stages of working on a new book idea. This means I spend a lot of time staring out the window, imagining new characters and worlds I might want to build for them. Mostly, though, it means I spend a lot of time surrounded by my piles of library books, soaking myself in the words of others. Filling up my creative well so that, eventually, my own words will overflow and spill out in the form of a new story.

A new book; a new dream come true.

Check out Jenny Lundquist’s The Library of Curiosities here:

Bookshop | Amazon

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The post Libraries and the Magic of a Dream Come True appeared first on Writer's Digest.

(Researching Your Fiction Like a Reporter.)

In contemporary screenplays I’ve written, I’ve had to dig into what’s being used for both military and street weaponry, the cop jargon of the moment, advances in science and space travel, the music currently popular with America’s youth—each project reveals something you don’t know enough about. But for my truly ‘historical’ novels- A Moment in the Sun, Jamie MacGillivray, and now To Save the Man, this is a much bigger, and in many ways, more rewarding job. One thing leads to another, you realize you’ve misunderstood history you thought you knew, you get new ideas that can lead you off into undiscovered territory—

Which is very seductive.

And time-consuming. I’ve spent most of the day in a library reading a whole book I was only probing for one factoid. So my basic rule is that I can spend a maximum of one week digging for information for any chapter or sequence, and then I have to sit down and write some fiction. Of course, sometimes you have to leave blanks for details you haven’t nailed down yet, but those can be found and inserted later. Sometimes you’ll write stuff that you later learn makes no historical sense, but I think it’s more important to keep your forward motion going—I’ve even written ‘Better writing here’ in the margins when I’m on a roll and want to get something down before I forget any of it. 

You write, basically, so you have something to rewrite, and I’m lucky in that I very quickly forget what I’ve already done. Two days away, or even better, a week of research on an unrelated topic, and I barely recognize what I’ve already laid down when I get back to it. Because I’m bad at labelling and keeping track of computer files, I have more than once gotten two paragraphs into a scene before starting to wonder, ‘Isn’t this awfully familiar?,’ then discovered an eight-page scene I’d already written a month earlier squirreled away somewhere. Sometimes it’s even good.

To Save the Man began with research I did for a rewrite-for-hire screenplay job I got many years ago, about a once-famous football game between Army and the Carlisle Indian School the last year Jim Thorpe played for them. The script I was given to rework had lots of obvious historical errors just in the football itself—nobody ‘blitzed’ in that era because there were few forward passes, and the word didn’t get into our vocabulary for another 20 years when Hitler started his ‘blitzkreig.’ There wasn’t yet an end zone, goalposts being up at the zero yard line, and coaches weren’t allowed to send plays in with replacements—the quarterbacks were truly ‘field marshals.’ 

So I started from scratch, learning what I could about the origins and ambience of the Carlisle School, and lots of dramatic non-football stories kept popping up. The Thorpe movie never got made, but a character I invented who ran away from the school showed up in my A Moment in the Sun a bit later, and then I wrote a spec screenplay, set in 1890-91 (only shortly after Jim Thorpe was born) and we went about trying to get financing to make it into a movie.

Unsuccessfully.

Something like 20 years passed, and as was the case with Jamie MacGillivray, one day I decided it was too good a story to just abandon, and began to turn it into a novel. For me, the biggest difference in these two forms is their relation to time. I still write feature films to be viewed in one sitting, with editing and music to give the audience a certain rhythmic experience. But anybody who reads A Moment in the Sun, described in one review as ‘a cat-crusher of a book,’ in one sitting, needs an intervention. Most readers pick substantial books up and put them down, sometimes for more than one day, before finishing, so your efforts at rhythmic novel writing go into sequences or chapters.

And then you turn the page.

In adapting a screenplay into a novel the idea of something that will run between 95 and 130 minutes goes out the window, and suddenly the opportunity to inhabit the points of view of multiple characters becomes an option. In movies, generally, there are maybe three distinct points of view—the omniscient (the wide shot of the about-to-be-besieged house on a dark and stormy night), that of the antagonist (seeing the house through the slit in Jason’s hockey mask), and that of the protagonist (the heroine in the closet, watching the chainsaw blade cut through the door). In fiction—take something like Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying—you can create a mosaic of characters and their points of view, which I find a really satisfying way to tell a complex story.

And with each character and situation, questions come up, both about practical details (What year did we start having Social Security numbers?) and larger issues that affect the character’s world view (Is this before the women’s movement? Before Freud? Before capitalism?).

In the case of To Save the Man this meant reading books written by both faculty and students at the school, reading about the histories of various tribes, reading the Carlisle School publications from the era, looking at photographs, getting insurance maps of Carlisle, Pa. in 1890—one new discovery often leading to another I hadn’t even known existed. My biggest serendipitous coups were discovering the juicy family background of the Carlisle teacher who edited the school’s newspapers, finding the pro-genocide newspaper articles of L. Frank Baum of Wizard of Oz fame, and stumbling upon the diaries of Father Francis Craft, a loose-cannon of a Catholic priest who proselytized on the Lakota reservations and was stabbed, not fatally, at the Wounded Knee massacre. A chapter heading from the person who found and assembled his diaries reads ‘Was Father Craft Insane?’

This is a man you’ve got to get into the book—

Check out John Sayles’ To Save the Man here:

Bookshop | Amazon

(WD uses affiliate links)

The post On Writing and Research—for Books and Screenplays appeared first on Writer's Digest.

(23 Most Popular Writing Posts of 2023.)

Each post was originally published in 2024 and has been visited many, many times during the year. And yes, I’ve included more than 24, because a few of these can be categorized together. And I just like sharing all the fun stuff we’ve done during the year.

So here we go. Click on the titles to read the original posts.

24 Most Popular Writing Posts of 2024

1. 21 Popular Romance Tropes for Writers, by Robert Lee Brewer. Last year, “21 Popular Fantasy Tropes for Writers” topped the list, so tropes have been a hot topic for a couple years on this site now. As the title suggests, this one collects 21 popular romance tropes. “21 Popular Thriller Tropes for Writers” finished as the 13th most popular post this year.
2. 5 Tips for Writing Better and Faster, by Robert W. Bly. Bly is a career freelancer and copywriting expert who shares his top tips for writing better and faster, regardless of what genre you’re writing.
3. Top 4 Tips for Writing Great Beginnings, by Abigail Owen. Award-winning author Abigail Owen shares her top four tips for writing great beginnings, including figuring out where to start, making scenes dynamic, and more.
4. Read, Then Write: Books to Study to Help Your Stories, by Michael Woodson. Michael Woodson often puts together nice reading lists on the site for writers, and this one really spoke to writers, perhaps because it focuses on how the reading can inform the writing.
5. C.J. Box: Read Across Genres, by Robert Lee Brewer. The author spotlight series is one of my favorite things on the site. Every week, we feature multiple authors, both new and established, on the site. Check them all out here.
6. I Got 8 Agent Offers; Then, My Book Died on Sub, by Lauren Kay. While she did eventually find success, Lauren Kay shares her harrowing story of being at the top of her game to crashing to earth in publishing disappointment.
7. 7 Healthy Habits for Writers to Find Success, by Chris Saunders. In this piece, Saunders shares seven healthy habits for writers to find success with their writing, including a pro tip for each.
8. Writer’s Digest 101 Best Websites for Writers 2024, by Amy Jones, Moriah Richard, and Michael Woodson. This massive list that’s updated every year by the WD print editors has become a regular feature of our most popular writing posts list.
9. Why I Choose to Self-Publish My Writing, by Norah Woodsey. In this piece, Woodsey shares her reasoning for going the self-publishing route, even if it does provoke a smirk or two from people who ask about her publisher.
10. The Writing Exercise That Inspired My Novel Series and Changed My Life, by Kelly Vincent. Any writing exercise that can change a person’s life is worth knowing, especially if it can also inspire a novel series in the process.
11. 29 Writing Prompts for the 2024 Flash Fiction Challenge, by Moriah Richard. Moriah’s February Flash Fiction Challenge has become one of the more popular events every year on the site. Here, she’s collected all her prompts for the 2024 challenge.
12. On Writing Slowly, by Luis Jaramillo. Some writers just aren’t the fastest at getting words down on the page, and that’s completely okay. In fact, Jaramillo shares some thoughts on how slow writing can actually be beneficial.
13. The 3 Best Writing Tips I’ve Gotten From Masters, and the 4 Best Writing Tips I’ve Given, by Peter Blauner. In this piece, Blauner shares the best writing tips he’s received and given, including how to create a scene, balancing shock and suspense, and more.
14. The Long Art of the Short Story, by Elly Griffiths. Award-winning author Elly Griffiths discusses the long art of the short story and how it offers opportunities that novels just can’t.
15. The Questions That Drive a Novel vs. Short Story, by María Alejandra Barrios Vélez. Related to Griffiths’ post, María Alejandra Barrios Vélez shares the questions she considers when writing a novel vs. writing a short story.
16. Think AI Is Bad? The Worst Is Yet to Come, by Mike Trigg. Author and former tech executive Mike Trigg shares why writers are right to fear AI, though maybe not for the same reason many think.
17. 5 Changes That Matter From the Chicago Manual of Style, 18th Edition, by Russell Harper. The principal reviser of this popular style guide highlights the five top changes to the The Chicago Manual of Style.
18. 5 Ways to Write Better Copy Than ChatGPT, by Robert W. Bly. Bly shows up on this list a second time, this time with tips for writers to outperform ChatGPT when writing their copy.
19. What Is Romantasy, Anyway?, by M. K. Lobb. Romantasy is perhaps the hottest writing genre going at the moment, so Lobb takes a stab at defining what it is for other writers.
20. What I’ve Learned After Publishing My First Book, by Victory Witherkeigh. Award-winning author Victory Witherkeigh shares what she learned after publishing her first book.
21. Writing Blockbuster Fiction: Mastering the Art of Cinematic Storytelling, by Ryan G. Van Cleave. In this piece, Van Cleave explains how to fuse your novels with Hollywood flair by employing top screenwriting techniques.
22. 2024 April PAD Challenge: Day 1, by Robert Lee Brewer. The April Poem-A-Day Challenge is the biggest event on the site every year, as poets from around the world write a new poem daily. Here’s the first prompt of the 2024 challenge.
23. 5 Secrets to Writing a Great Setting, by Crystal Kaswell. In this piece, Kaswell shares her top five secrets for writing a great setting that will engage readers without slowing down the story.
24. My Unusual Debut Success Story That Landed a Two-Book Deal With a Major Publisher, by Jenna Satterthwaite. In this final piece, Satterthwaite shares her publishing success story, which takes a slightly different route than what is often considered “the norm.”

So there you have it. Now don’t forget to share what you’d like to see in 2025 and beyond in the comments below. And check our home page regularly, because we’re constantly sharing great new writing posts.

*****

Dive into the world of writing and learn all 12 steps needed to complete a first draft. In this writing workshop you will tackle the steps to writing a book, learn effective writing techniques along the way, and of course, begin writing your first draft.

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Writers from around the world and throughout the centuries have found inspiration from the beauty of Florence and the surrounding Tuscan countryside. Now, you can be one of them! Join Writer’s Digest in Florence and Tuscany this fall for the most awe-inspiring writing retreat available!

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Presenting the Writer’s Yearbook 2025!

The 2025 Writer’s Yearbook, presented by Writer’s Digest, is a comprehensive resource for writers who need a boost to finish the year on a strong note or start planning their new years’ writing goals. Featuring the top websites and markets for writers, plus articles on freelancing, creativity, writing book-length works, and attracting an agent, this special publication has something for any writer looking to get their work published.

Available on newsstands only, now through February 11, 2025.

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Beginning Feature Film Writing: Complete Course

From our friends at Script Magazine, this 12-week course guides students through the process of building a feature film script, starting with an outline and continuing through all the acts of your screenplay. You will get expert guidance on your writing along the way, and helpful self-tests allow you to reinforce your mastery of the lecture content.

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Watch more than 400 expert writing tutorials!

With a growing catalog of instructional writing videos available instantly, we have writing instruction on everything from improving your craft to getting published and finding an audience. New videos are added every month!

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The objective of this class is to educate you, an author considering or choosing self-publishing, about the important decisions you need to make and things you need to do during the book preparation process that have an impact on marketing success once your book is released.

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If you want more online education, see the full list of WDU courses here.

Register for the 3rd Annual Nonfiction Writing Virtual Conference!

Writer’s Digest University is pleased to present a one-of-a-kind online event for Nonfiction writers! On November 16, 2024, our WDU Nonfiction Writing Virtual Conference will provide expert insights from Gina Barreca, Gina Demillo Wagner, and two other bestselling nonfiction authors. Spend the day learning techniques for honing your craft, then optionally receive a personalized critique of your query letter or pitch for a magazine/web article from a participating literary agent.

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Writer’s Digest November/December 2024 Cover Reveal

As we approach the holiday season, it’s time to focus on the things that bring comfort. For writers, that means finding ways to cozy up and write or take comfort in a good book. In this issue, writers will find articles on everything from writing cozy mysteries and holiday romances to how to use your comfort reads to improve your writing and the charming Icelandic Christmas Eve tradition of book giving.

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The post Self-Publishing Foundations for Long-Term Success appeared first on Writer's Digest.