Category: Creative Writing

External conflict is what makes the reader turn the page to find out what happens next. Internal conflict makes the reader care.

One day, an elderly man phoned me up out of the blue. He was looking for someone to help him write a book about his life. His English was impeccable, and he had an accent that I couldn't quite place. Then he said something that made my jaw drop: he was a Holocaust survivor.

Nature writing, true crime, history, essays, memoir, and narrative journalism all have this in common: if the writing is not compelling, the reader will put it down.

Beyond video, audio, and photography, writing may be the most powerful way to preserve and share family history. Journalist and speechwriter Stephen Martin shares why.

It’s sometimes difficult to identify the mistakes that stem from poor planning. The first step to correcting them is knowing what they look like.

In this webinar, Morgan Baden, Nicola Krauss, and Nisha Sharma, all published authors and industry experts get candid about how tough it can be to focus on creative projects right now, and how aspiring writers can find balance—and maybe even inspiration—in the turmoil.

For the uninitiated, fan fiction is any writing someone does that uses another writer’s characters and setting. These fanfic communities are more than just virtual writing workshops, though. Over time, they became havens for emerging writers — safe spaces in which people who had never before shared their writing publicly could express themselves.

Starting this week, we're participating in a fun and unusual project on Twitter. For the rest of the month of October, seven authors on Twitter will be sharing daily frightening tales in threaded tweets marked with the hashtag #ScaryStories.

Some famous authors dabbled as ghostwriters before their careers were established. Did you know these big names were once ghosts?

Recent studies have determined that the benefits of reading fiction are not only mental, but physical as well—and ultimately a universal force for good.