Creative Writing Blog | Writing Tips and Ideas

Poetry: Making Music with Words

Most writers are primarily concerned with the meaning of the words they choose. Is the language precise and accurate? Do the words provide the best connotation for what the writer is trying to communicate? Does the language show, rather than tell? But poets take language a step further and push it into the realm of…Read More

Grammar Rules: Further vs. Farther

Believe it or not, the words further and farther have different meanings, although people tend to use them interchangeably. And it’s no surprise, because these two words look and sound similar, and the difference in meaning is subtle. Plus there are a few circumstances when they are legitimately interchangeable. Let’s solve the further vs. farther…Read More

How to Be More Creative in Your Writing

Here’s an age-old question: is creative writing an art or a craft? Artistically minded writers will say that writing is most definitely an art while those who who think more analytically will claim writing is a skill, a trade, and a business. My answer is that writing can be either an art or a craft,…Read More

Eight Characteristics of Good Writing

How important is it for a writer to be able to discern the difference between good writing and bad writing? Pretty important, if you ask me. I know some writers aren’t concerned with quality. In today’s do-it-yourself and get-it-done-fast world, quality plays second fiddle to quantity. Who cares if your books are full of typos,…Read More

Ten Tips for Writing a Book

Writing a book is a big deal. It takes a lot of time and effort, especially if you want to do it right, which means creating something that people will find entertaining or useful and then polishing, marketing, and promoting it. It all begins with an idea — a concept. It might start with a…Read More

Writing Resources: The Crafty Poet

This post contains affiliate links. One of my favorite classes in college was a poetry writing workshop. Sometimes we did poetry prompts or exercises. Occasionally we read and analyzed poetry. But mostly we shared our poems and received feedback that would help us see the strengths and weaknesses in our work. And then we could…Read More

100 Poetry Prompts

My first love in writing was poetry. In my early teens, writing poetry was a creative and cathartic way to explore my ideas and vent my emotions. Writing poetry was accessible — all I needed was some paper and a pen. It didn’t even require a huge investment of time. I scrawled words onto the…Read More

Literary Style in Storytelling

Today’s post includes excerpts from What’s the Story? Building Blocks for Fiction Writing, chapter five: “Narrative Style, Voice, and Tone.” Enjoy! Literary Style Literary style is the aesthetic quality of a work of literature—the distinct voice that makes each author unique. It’s the way we string words together, the rhythm of our prose, the catchphrases…Read More

How to Construe and Convey Tone in Poetry

In literature, tone is the mood, attitude, or emotional sensibility of a written work. In poetry, tone expresses the narrator’s disposition toward the poem’s subject, the reader, or the narrative itself. We might describe a poem’s tone as irreverent, relaxed, sarcastic, solemn, jubilant, or desperate. Tone can be any emotion or state of mind, and a…Read More

Punctuation Marks: The Colon

The colon is one of the most clearly-defined punctuation marks. It occasionally acts as a stand-in for a comma or period (though when one of these other punctuation marks will do, the colon is unnecessary). Most commonly, the colon functions as an introductory punctuation mark, notifying the reader that the forthcoming information supports, explains, or…Read More