Don’t know where to start on your historical fiction novel? Author Mariah Fredericks reveals how she conducted research on The Gilded Age for her new book, Death of a New American. I love historical fiction. Growing up, I read Jean Plaidy...
N.K. Jemisin wants to be a “storyteller of a writer.” It’s an ambition she claims not to have mastered, but many who have lost themselves in Jemisin’s tales of captive gods and stone eaters are sure to disagree. Through her three ep...
From fast-paced action to intimate drama, third-person limited POV can be adapted to any scene or situation. Let’s start with a flashback. When my story was up for discussion in my first-ever writing class, our lanky, mustachioed instruct...
Dima Ghawi, author of Breaking Vases, which won the grand prize in WD’s 26th Annual Self-Published Book Awards Winner. The author reveals how she found the strength to write her powerful personal story—and how she wrote and produced th...
In this extended interview from the March/April 2019 issue of Writer’s Digest, Min Jin Lee talks about finding story ideas that truly provoke your passions and how to tune out the burden of expectations in this extended WD Interview. Pho...
Playwright and author Stephen Evans explains how to write funny dialogue with these five key tips informed by neurology, rhythm and theater. I remember the first time I heard an audience laugh at one of my plays. It was thrilling. And fasci...
The protagonist of my WIP (almost completed as of right now) is a forty-three year old woman who has chronic obesity. The plot is built around her size and the insecurities that result from it in relation to a strange man she meets. As I am...
He Wants to Dance on My Grave (3,021 words) It was a nice bar, in midtown Manhattan. Brass fixtures gleamed. Beer taps swan-necked over a varnished counter, oaken. The bartender, an old-school man with slicked-back hair as white as dove fea...
Microsoft’s free Learning Tools keep getting better. This week Microsoft announced ten updates that are either available now or will be available soon to Word and OneNote users. And if you’re not currently using Word or OneNote ...
Half of you will know what I’m doing with this. The the other half will be offended or confused or tone me out because I swear a lot, but this isn’t for you. It’s for the first half. What are we doing? We’re talking ...