Writing

How to write a killer opening line. Why Google is not research. When to rip it up and start again. Whatever you do, just write! Lessons from acclaimed novelist and creative writing professor Colum McCann

Yesterday, FSG published Susan Sontag’s Debriefing, a new collection of the writer’s short fiction. I’m always excited to read more of Sontag’s work—which is convenient, bec…

I put up a little thread on Twitter on this subject last week. A lot of people seemed to want to hear more. So here it is. A long read I’m…

Lord Chesterfield called the novel “a kind of abbreviation of a Romance.” Ian McEwan described the more compact novella as “the beautiful daughter of a rambling, bloated, ill-shaven giant.” William…

How to write good dialogue? Well, the rule is that your characters’ speech should always sound believable.

Every year, we’re lucky to have great sponsors for our nonprofit events. Today, our sponsor Reedsy has put together a list of the most common mistakes for rookie novelists (Want more advice from Reedsy? Check out their webcast on writing and submitting query letters!):

The hardest part of writing a novel is the middle. Here’s how to get through it.

How millennial novelists are confronting the challenging of representing our text habits in fiction

Tips, tricks, and hard-won lessons: from creating drafts to working with editors.

Discover these fantastic podcasts for writing inspiration.

Free guides, podcasts and interviews about writing. Featuring Margaret Atwood, Nicci French, Tim Clare, Elizabeth Haynes, Mark Dawson, Joanna Penn and more!

One day, in my intro to creative writing class, after I had my students spend a few minutes free-writing in response to a Frida Kahlo painting, one of them raised her hand. “Do you mind if I ask a…

How long does it take to write a book? Stephen King says writing a book should take no more than three months—and this author discovered he's right.

Because it's so important to take full of advantage of dialogue, let's take a look at a ten ways to write excellent dialogue.

I asked my team to put together a list of the best creative writing blogs on the internet. Here are the top 13 they recommend.

Barbara Linn Probst delves into the very heart of your novel: its "About-ness." Learn the questions (and answers) that help your story resonate deeper with readers.

The Granta team share writing techniques and advice from their archives.

In this week’s mailbag: Have you ever made an altered book?

Claire Fuller shares the many ways flash fiction can be useful to all types of writers, even if your word count is usually in the thousands.

Learn to write engaging short fiction by ditching conflicts and resolutions

I realized my book could focus on what I cared about most

Scott Dikkers shares the 10 writing rules that took The Onion from a local print magazine to a globally renowned media house with nearly 20 million social followers and over 10 million monthly visitors.

Has somebody accused you of writing about them when you don't even know them? Sometimes your fiction can trigger people when life imitates fiction.

President Abraham Lincoln was a big fan: “it’s a very useful little chap.”

Hey Week 5 and you’re hitting the hump aren’t you? I can feel it. I get to this point also. It’s where the adrenaline of the initial idea is wearing off and you’re starting to find conjuring drama difficult and writing is hard and it’s just easier to muck about on the internet, and the book you’re reading is making you think, I am terrible, everything I do is terrible, I’ll never be as good as this, and you’re ready to junk it in.

There is nothing more sustaining to long-term creative work than time and space – and these things cost money

Can you remember what you did when you started on the novel you’re working on? If you’ve finished more than one, do you have a way you like to prepare? Are they always the same or are they differen…

Robert McCrum: I'm agnostic about the benefits of creative-writing classes, but would-be fictioneers could do worse than emulate the greats