Writing Help
Looking for a few extra tips and tricks or craft hints? You’ve found YeahWrite’s Writing Help archive. Below, you’ll see a collection of the posts we think you’ll find helpful. Besides our monthly Nonfiction Know-How and Poetry Slams, we’ve included posts from past workshops, guest authors, classes, and the times one or another of our editors added some in-depth knowledge during a routine weekly post. Be sure to check out our favorite post: the one that defines the “so what.” Whether you write fiction, nonfiction, or correspondence, your reader should never be left asking… so what? We’ve also collected our best of the best posts about constructive criticism in one place, because writing help is also about helping each other write. Good luck, and happy writing!
Emotional Misuse
With the solstice just past, most of us are either in the depths of winter or the height of summer. So it's natural to be thinking about extremes. For this month's Nonfiction Know-How, I'll be discussing emotional extremes and giving you a few tips on when to use and...
got filk?
Let's take a mid-season break! Where I'm sitting, it's almost midsummer. Editor Asha, in Australia, is watching midwinter approach. But no matter where in the world you are, it's a season of song. Some of us are singing around beach bonfires, others are caroling or...
Think Outside the Thesaurus
A Glancing Blow Do you ever notice, when you're editing, that you have a "favorite word?" Mine, apparently, is "glance." In the rough draft of the novel I'm editing, "glance" occurs on average once every 1.98 pages. In the second draft, it occurs once every 6 pages....
Resuscitating your darlings
"It's not a journal entry, it's a personal essay." That's something I say a lot when I'm making edits. Also this: "Your essay needs to be more than a list of events interspersed with your feels." What's the difference, really, though? And why does it matter? For this...
Nothing more than feelings?
All right, poets, it's your turn. April was National Poetry Month, so this month instead of a slam we're going to talk about how to read and critique all that work you generated for your #poemaday before you unleash it on an unsuspecting Internet. Or, if you've been...
It’s Better to Give Than Receive: Concrit Part II
Ever hear "it's better to give than receive?" Well, in the case of criticism, it's certainly easier to give than receive. For part two of what turned into a two part post because when have I ever not been long-winded, I'm going to dive into receiving criticism....
Bigger isn’t always better
Editor's note: Hey, gang. In lieu of a poetry slam this month I'm giving you a special treat: a look into the brain of our original micro grid editor, Christine! Christine started writing micros back at the old Trifecta challenge and when YeahWrite decided to add a...
Under construction
Enough about writing; let's talk about reading. For this month's nonfiction knowhow, I want you to take a little break from your own writing. I'm always harping on how being a better reader will make you a better writer. But how do you become a better reader, and what...
Drawing a blank
Big changes are in the air for yeah write. That's why I want to get back to the basics this month. The basics of poetry, that is. It's been almost two years since we first delved into blank verse for a poetry slam, and while I'd like to pretend all the new folks go...
A couple couplets
Now that everyone's familiar with the couplet, let's take February's post to the next level. For this month's poetry slam we'll be taking everything we learned about writing in tight spaces and applying it to the four-line memoriam stanza. Before I dive in, y'all, I'm...
It’s not over ’til it’s over
This month's nonfiction knowhow is a little bit of a throwback. We've spent a lot of time lately talking about how to get writing that appeals to your audience onto the page; for Valentine's Day we're gonna remind you how to show your writing a little additional love....
Less is more
It's not the size that matters... It's whether you start your post with a semi-appropriate joke. Actually, what I did just there is what you'll be doing this month: wrote a couplet. Although we usually think of couplets as building blocks for longer poems, they can be...
Reach out and touch someone
There's nothing like reading through the grid (or your articles feed, or...) and coming across an essay that makes you say "Ugh, another navelgazing pile of word vomit."And yet, there are also personal essays you'll read that change the way you frame your life, make...
Class is in Session
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]What do you remember from learning to write in school? Did you have a particular teacher who made writing interesting? Did you read a story or article and think "oh, I wish I could write like that?" We get so used to the structured...
This is the end, my only friend, the end
It's the little things that matter, as we wind down to the end of the year. Tiny lights on evergreen trees. Tiny candles in their rows. The tiny terminal 'e' that differentiates between a ballad and a ballade. That's right, we're more or less obsessed with endings...