Writing

If you have ever struggled with unexpected formatting or weird line breaks in your Kindle ebooks, a plain text editor might be your new best friend. While most authors write with word processors like Microsoft Word or Apple Pages, these programs always embed hidden code that can play havoc with your final manuscript. A plain…

You know you need to check your writing before publishing an article, a blog post, or a book. However, effective checking involves much more than grammar and spelling checking. You want to make sure that your text reads well and keeps a reader’s attention. To achieve this, the flow or order of your content is…

Artificial intelligence writing, more commonly called AI writing, is everywhere on the Internet. If you are starting a new blog, it is very tempting. It’s so easy to generate blog posts and articles in just a few seconds. All you need to do is provide a few topic sentences or paragraph headings. Then an AI…

The verb to get is one of the most common words in English. We use it all the time when we speak, but it’s sometimes better to find alternative verbs in writing. Good writing is always about variety and finding the right words. But because this verb has so many meanings and functions, it’s easy…

For most writers, the hardest part of writing is right here. It’s the start, the beginning, the opening. It’s finding an idea, the first words, and the first sentence. All types of writing have a beginning, so it’s the same for every writer. You might be writing a book, an article, a poem, or an…

Using foreign phrases and words in a novel is very common because they can help to add authenticity. If you set your story in Paris, for example, adding some dialogue in French might seem like a perfectly good idea, which it is. However, there are some traps that you can fall into that could have…

It’s a tough decision for any author to stop writing a book. You started your writing project with a lot of enthusiasm. But now it’s becoming a grind. Every writer has a file of unfinished, abandoned, or forgotten manuscripts. So don’t think you are alone when you start having doubts about your book. As in…

An oxymoron and paradox are similar literary devices because contradictory terms often appear together. While they are alike, they differ in their construction. An oxymoron usually consists of only two or possibly three words. Examples include pretty ugly, original copy, and think out loud. A paradox, on the other hand, is a sentence that often…

Good writers never write a first sentence; they carefully create and craft one with a clear objective in mind. The opening sentence in any piece of writing needs to convince the reader that what follows is worth reading. Whether you are writing a novel, an essay, an article, a blog post, or a poem, your…