Resources
From Category: Essays on Writing
Find Editors Who Like You
In this 2023 column for Lit Mag News, poet and freelance journalist Noah Berlatsky advises cultivating long-term relationships with sympathetic journals and presses. Traditional career advice tells you to treat lesser-known venues as mere stepping-stones to more prestigious publications, but if the latter opportunities don't materialize, perhaps you're just depriving yourself of satisfaction in the career you actually have.
The Essay as Experiment
In this Poets & Writers Craft Capsule from 2023, Christine Imperial (Mistaken for an Empire: A Memoir in Tongues, Mad Creek Books) suggests returning to the literal meaning of "essay" as "an attempt," embracing disjunction and uncertainty in our writing process instead of forcing the narrative into the neat mainstream comprehensibility we learned in school.
False Witnesses: On Writing About War
In this 2022 critical essay from The Point magazine, Phil Klay examines the moral and aesthetic conundrums of bearing witness to war through poetry. Klay is a fiction writer, essayist, and US Marine Corps veteran of the Iraq War.
Mythcreants
Mythcreants is a comprehensive and lively collection of blog posts and podcast episodes with craft advice for fantasy and sci-fi storytelling. Topics range from worldbuilding and story structure to avoidance of oppressive tropes.
To Everyone Who Wants Me to Read Their Writing and Tell Them What to Do
In this 2022 blog post, publishing expert Jane Friedman talks about the benefits and limits of asking for feedback as a beginning writer. The takeaway: perseverance and passion are more important than any one person's opinion. "If I were to tell you today that your project is a waste of time, would you abandon it? If so, perhaps it's best that you did. To keep writing in the face of rejection is required of every professional and published writer I know."
On Building a Poetry Manuscript for Publication
In this 2021 blog post from Cincinnati Review, poet and editor Sean Cho A. breaks down the screening process for contests and open reading periods, and suggests how to structure the beginning and end of your manuscript to showcase major themes. Sean Cho A. is an editorial assistant at Cincinnati Review's Acre Books imprint and the winner of the Autumn House Press chapbook contest for American Home.
On Writing Fat Characters
In this Craft Capsule column from Poets & Writers, fiction writer Christopher Gonzalez (I'm Not Hungry but I Could Eat) talks about being true to the interiority of fat characters, portraying their bodies in respectful ways, and pushing back against the default image of queer men as white and muscular.
On (Not) Tracking Movement
In this 2021 essay in in CRAFT Literary, fiction writer and teacher Mike Goodwin advises eliminating mundane action from your narrative. Too many beginning writers waste space with step-by-step descriptions of routine behavior, without using those moments to reveal character or plot. Using the work of minimalists like Raymond Carver as examples, Goodwin breaks down how to write a straightforward scene where every detail counts.
How to Write Your First Comic Book
Cultural essayist and journalist Jude Ellison S. Doyle (Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers) describes how they taught themselves the conventions of writing their first comic book, the feminist horror comic MAW (Boom! Studios, 2021), as well as tips on working with illustrators and editors.
The Volta in Flash Fiction
In this craft essay, fiction writer Cole Meyer, an editor at The Masters Review, suggests structuring a flash fiction piece like a poem with a "volta"—a shift of thought or mood that gives the piece its tension and forward movement.
What Is Creative Nonfiction?
The website of well-regarded literary journal Creative Nonfiction offers articles on how to define the genre, its signature techniques, and sample essays from the magazine.
Techno-Orientalism in Science Fiction
Chloe Gong is the author of These Violent Delights (Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2020), a paranormal retelling of Romeo and Juliet set in 1926 Shanghai. In this 2019 blog post, she discusses how to write cyberpunk and dystopian speculative fiction without relying on imagery of Asian societies as unfeeling, robotic, and menacing.
Making Manuscripts: An Irregularly Braided Conversation
In this interview from the Spring 2021 issue of DMQ Review, poets Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet (Morse Poetry Prize winner for Tulips, Water, Ash) and Annie Kim (Word Works Washington Prize winner for Eros, Unbroken) share their manuscript craft tips and intuitive strategies for discovering how poems speak to one another.
Writer’s Digest Tips on Writing a Standout Self-Published Book
AJ Wells, a judge for the self-published book competitions at Writer's Digest, breaks down the key ingredients of a successful entry. Professional cover design is a must, as is editing to eliminate extraneous details that slow down the story. Don't rush the book into print without making it as polished as possible.
Austin Kleon’s Writing Newsletter
Writer and illustrator Austin Kleon is the bestselling author of the creativity guide Steal Like an Artist and other books. His free weekly e-newsletter (archived on his website) features 10 links to writing, art, and other media that he finds worthwhile and relevant to the moment. An example of Kleon's playful, down-to-earth writing advice: "When I am beginning a new project, I often ask myself, 'What's something you despise in the culture that you wish were otherwise?' and I go from there."
The Maven Game
David Moldawer was an acquisitions editor for major NYC publishing houses, and now runs Bookitect, an editing and ghostwriting service. His weekly email newsletter, The Maven Game, features his entertaining and informative reflections on the craft and business of writing.
Dead Darlings
Dead Darlings is a novel-writing advice blog by alumni of GrubStreet Boston's Novel Incubator. Brief, personable essays cover a variety of topics from inspiration to revision, publication, and marketing. There are also interviews with authors of notable new books.
The ADD Writer
In this 2020 blog post, author and writing teacher Michael Jackman shares tips for writing productively with attention deficit disorder. If daily routines and schedules don't suit the way your brain is wired, try some of his strategies for jump-starting your creative enthusiasm, such as exercise, travel, and enjoying cultural events. Above all, take the long view of your productivity and don't measure yourself against people with different needs.
Craft Capsule: The End
In this installment in the Craft Capsules essay series at Poets & Writers, Cameron Awkward-Rich, a Lambda Literary Award poetry finalist and professor at University of Massachusetts-Amherst, talks about his revision process. Any elements of the poem that he can re-create from memory are essential, he has found. "What I like about using memorization as a diagnostic is that it says nothing about the “quality” of a poem, so it discourages thinking about revision as 'fixing.' Instead, what determines whether a poem is finished is the relationship between us, the poem and I."
How to Write a Memoir
William Zinsser (1922-2015) was a widely published journalist who wrote for periodicals such as The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and The New York Herald Tribune. His seven books on the craft of writing include On Writing Well. In this article from The American Scholar, where he was a regular columnist, Zinsser gives sound practical advice about how to structure your memoir, and stresses the importance of recording your family story, whether or not you seek publication.
The Over-manipulation Problem
May Peterson is an editor, writing consultant, and author of the fantasy novel Lord of the Last Heartbeat (Carina Press, 2019). In this writing advice post from her blog, she cautions against the self-doubt that leads writers to revise too much. Rather than think of early drafts as problems to be fixed, learn to appreciate your strengths at every stage, while being aware that your work will change and grow. "We all need to strive, but we all need to accept, too, and it's the latter part writers often have trouble with...What I encourage writers to do is to cultivate trust in their writing. Not just their skills, or their voice, but what their writing is about for them. The things they like about their own writing, just as it is."
Moves in Contemporary Poetry
In this 2010 essay in the online journal HTMLgiant, Mike Young comes up with a list of 41 rhetorical and syntactical techniques that have become popular in 21st-century poetry. Examples are drawn from critically acclaimed authors such as Heather Christle, Alice Fulton, Jack Gilbert, D.A. Powell, and Dean Young. The list can help new writers think twice about stylistic choices that may have become academic clichés.
Literary Citizenship
In this article, creative writing professor Cathy Day proposes the concept of "literary citizenship"—the skills and habits that we can all cultivate to build a stronger and more generous literary community, whether or not we are published authors ourselves. Day observes: "the reason I teach creative writing isn't just to create writers, but also to create a populace that cares about reading...I wish more aspiring writers would contribute to, not just expect things from, that world they want so much to be a part of." Good citizenship includes reviewing books you enjoyed, letting writers know you appreciate their work, and buying books and literary journals.
The Writer Magazine: Essays About Writing
The Writer Magazine is a well-established guide to writing, editing, and marketing your work. This page on their website collects links to their past articles with inspirational tips for writers. Topics include finding the heart of your story, balancing writing and parenting, and resisting negativity from your inner critic.
The Fries Test: On Disability Representation in Our Culture
Kenny Fries is a poet, memoir writer, and editor of the anthology Staring Back: The Disability Experience from the Inside Out. In this essay on Medium, he proposes guidelines for adequate and respectful disability representation in literature, similar to the well-known Bechdel Test for women characters. "Does a work have more than one disabled character? Do the disabled characters have their own narrative purpose other than the education and profit of a nondisabled character? Is the character's disability not eradicated either by curing or killing?" Novelist Nicola Griffiths is compiling a list on her website based on readers' suggestions. As she notes in a 2018 New York Times editorial, since a quarter of the US population has some sort of disability, we should be able to name over a million non-ableist narratives—but instead, there are fewer than a hundred qualifying books on her list.
The Creative Independent
The Creative Independent is an ever-expanding resource of emotional and practical guidance for creative people. The website features brief interviews and essays by writers and artists in various disciplines, on topics ranging from starting a business to coping with adversity.
Cultural Appropriation for the Worried Writer
Jeannette Ng is a medieval studies scholar and author of the British Fantasy Award winning novel Under the Pendulum Sun. In this article for Medium, she discusses how to write responsibly outside your demographic. Some tips: stop looking for fail-safe rules, think critically about your motives and sources, and compensate the people who are teaching you about other cultures.
Layering Place: In Ourselves, in Our Writing
In this 2018 piece from Ruminate Magazine, a faith-informed literary journal, essayist Catherine Hervey discusses ways to flesh out literary characters through the details they notice about a place and the memories that overlay it.
Art Has an Effect (Make Sure It’s the Effect You Want)
In this blog post from 2018, May Peterson (a/k/a M.A. Peterson), a romance and fantasy novelist and fiction editor, explains that an important goal of "sensitivity reader" edits is to remove inadvertently offensive details that don't advance the vision of the story. All character description is selective, so authors should be glad to prune away careless errors that could dilute readers' connection with the book.
So You Wanna Write a Black Person
In this blog post from Queeromance Ink, a site for promoting LGBTQ fiction, romance and erotica author Sharita Lira gives advice on writing non-stereotypical African-American characters, from her own experience and that of the romance readers and writers she polled.
Finding Communion in Disability Poetics
In this essay from the blog of the literary journal Ploughshares, poet Lizz Schumer surveys foundational works of the disability poetics movement, and what they meant to her self-concept and aesthetic development. Authors cited include Vassar Miller, Kenny Fries, Jim Ferris, Karrie Higgins, and Sheila Black.
The Romance Novelist’s Guide to Hot Consent
In this article on the feminist sexuality website Jezebel, six successful romance writers discuss the importance of building consent into your scenes of seduction and intimacy, and how to write it in a way that feels natural and appealing. This piece is a must-read for fiction authors in all genres.
Transcending Flesh in Fiction and Fantasy
Queer fantasy writer Ana Mardoll, author of the Earthside series, discusses how to acknowledge the existence and needs of transgender people when creating a fictional world that includes widespread access to body-modification techniques. This piece was published on xer Patreon page (a platform to support content creators with recurring donations); a complete book of essays on the topic is also available for download on a pay-as-you-wish basis..
The Art of Invisible Movement
Maggie Stiefvater is the New York Times bestselling author of the Raven Cycle series and other award-winning fantasy and magical realist novels. In this blog post, she advises fiction writers to make the same scene accomplish more than one task. For instance, a quiet, transitional scene does not have to be filler; it should reveal something important about backstory, character, or atmosphere. The key to good pacing is to use a variety of scene structures: earn those quiet moments by interspersing them with higher-energy action.
Readerly Privilege and Textual Violence: An Ethics of Engagement
In this 2017 essay from the LA Review of Books blog, widely published poet and critic Kristina Marie Darling advises reviewers how to be mindful of privilege and subjectivity when critiquing a poetry book, particularly one by a less-established author. She warns against inferring psychological or autobiographical details from authors' published work. The essay contends that the best reviews are those that situate the book in its own aesthetic tradition and point the book toward the audience most likely to appreciate it.
On Not Noticing
In this 2018 essay from the blog of the literary journal Ploughshares, novelist and writing teacher Adam O'Fallon Price analyzes how fictional characters can be individuated by what they notice, and fail to notice, in the scenes they describe. Since perception is selective, a description with too many details can make the scene seem less realistic.
To Trope or Not to Trope
In this 2017 essay from the blog of the literary journal Ploughshares, Chloe N. Clark discusses four stories that self-consciously re-use common fictional tropes about women in order to subvert these tropes. While beginning writers are often told to avoid clichéd roles for their characters, it can be an effective postmodern literary technique to make the characters themselves aware of and commenting on the limited identities they are forced to embody.
How Novelty Ruined the Novel
In this 2017 essay from Current Affairs, Brianna Rennix takes a skeptical look at popular experimental devices in contemporary literary novels. She argues that these tricks have become cliché, interfering with the genre's unique potential to entertain and provoke empathy. For fun, test your MFA syllabus or this week's New York Times Book Review against the Postmodern Novel Bingo card: "Entire chapter is just a list of ironic brand names"; "Tepid marriage ruined by unsatisfying infidelity"; "A lumbering comedic setpiece is suddenly interrupted by horrific violence"; and more.
Romantic Comedies: When Stalking Has a Happy Ending
In this 2016 article from The Atlantic, health and psychology editor Julie Beck discusses findings that the romantic comedy trope of persistent pursuit makes both men and women more likely to believe that stalking behaviors are an acceptable part of romance. Writers of romance novels, particularly heterosexual romance, should take care not to normalize behavior that would be threatening in real life.
Don’t Make Violence and Abuse Just Another Plot Device in Your Novel
Rene Denfeld is the bestselling author of the novels The Child Finder and The Enchanted, as well as a journalist, nonfiction author, and death penalty investigator. In this 2017 essay at LitHub, she discusses how to depict sexual violence and trauma responsibly, from a perspective that humanizes victims and restores their agency, rather than exploiting and objectifying them.
The Lovecraft Reread at Tor.com
H.P. Lovecraft was an influential early 20th century writer of horror and weird fiction, best known for his Cthulhu Mythos tales. In this online column at speculative fiction publisher Tor.com, modern Mythos writers Ruthanna Emrys and Anne M. Pillsworth revisit classic Lovecraft tales and discuss other stories being written in the Mythos tradition.
Q&A With Amy King from VIDA, Feminist Watchdog
The Riveter is a magazine of narratives and longform journalism by women. In this August 2017 piece, magazine co-founder Joanna Demkiewicz interviews poet Amy King about her work with VIDA, an organization launched in 2009 to track gender disparities in the top literary publications and book reviews. VIDA has since expanded its surveys to break down the data by race, ethnicity, sexuality/gender, disability, and neurodiversity.
Writing Better Trans Characters
Cheryl Morgan is a science fiction critic, radio presenter, and owner of Wizard's Tower Press. In this 2015 article from speculative fiction magazine Strange Horizons, she discusses tropes in transgender and genderqueer character representation and how to create gender-diverse worlds in a respectful and accurate way.
Rowena Macdonald on Dialogue
Rowena Macdonald is the author of The Threat Level Remains Severe (Aardvark Bureau), a comedic thriller about British politics. In this 2017 essay from Glimmer Train Bulletin, she shares useful tips for writing natural-sounding fictional dialogue.
The Rejection Survival Guide
Novelist and nonfiction writer Daniella Levy shares advice on this blog about staying hopeful and self-affirming in the face of the rejections that all writers experience. Her "Creative Resilience Manifesto" reads, in part: "I cultivate hope. I refrain from the use of prophylactic pessimism to numb myself to disappointment. I invite myself to feel everything." Levy is the author of By Light of Hidden Candles (Kasva Press), a historical novel about Spanish Jews during the 16th-century Inquisition.
How to Write a Killer Fairy Tale Retelling
In this article from the Fairy Tale News blog, Tahlia Merrill, editor of Timeless Tales Magazine, shares six tips for ensuring that your remixed fairy tale adds something fresh and interesting to the original. For example, she suggests reading multiple versions of the fable to pick out intriguing details, or considering a different setting or point-of-view character.
May I Have Several Hours of Your Time?
Writing professor Karen Craigo's poetry books include No More Milk (Sundress Publications, 2016) and Escaped Housewife Tries Hard to Blend In (Hermeneutic Chaos, 2016). In this blog post, she shares strategies for setting boundaries and time management when asked to mentor emerging writers. A very useful read for people on either side of the mentor-student relationship.
Representation Matters: A Literary Call to Arms
In this 2017 essay in LitReactor, K. Tempest Bradford shares tips for creating a diverse cast of characters and avoiding stereotypes in fiction. Bradford teaches classes on "Writing the Other" with Nisi Shaw, co-author of the foundational book on the subject. This article includes links to related anthologies and essays.
Reviews of Trans and/or Non-Binary Lit by Trans and/or Non-Binary Reviewers
Erotica writer and social issues blogger Xan West maintains this list of contemporary books on transgender and non-binary themes, with links to reviews by transgender and non-binary readers. West created the list because cisgender reviewers are not always in a position to recognize whether a book's portrayal of trans and non-binary experience is misinformed or offensive. Authors creating gender-variant characters would do well to educate themselves by browsing the relevant reviews.
How to Be a Good Beta Reader
In this article from the self-publishing and marketing service BookBaby, science writer Dawn Field shares eight tips for giving useful feedback on a manuscript.
