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!
I lik the bred
April Fools! No, kidding. April slam. April poetry slam. It's purely a coincidence that this slam went live on the last day you have to get something on the fiction|poetry grid for the first day of April. ANYWAY. For 2020 our poetry slams are exploring technique,...
It’s what’s inside
It's rhyme time! Yes, you heard me right. After all those months bagging on sonnets, I'm giving in. Let's talk about rhyme. Rhyme is probably the first thing you learned about poetry: it's just words that end in the same sound. Usually that sound isn't an isolated...
20/20 Hindsight – Second Variation
What have I done? Look, February's 20/20 was heckin' hard. We almost died trying to get our story down to wordcount. The good news is, that's the tightest wordcount you're going to have all year. The bad news is... we're still taking away your words, just in a whole...
20/20 Hindsight – First Variation
Tough love February is the month of love. Or lurrrrrrve, as we like to say it. So what better way to celebrate than to make you hate us just a little? Don't say you're not going to hate us. We hate us already. This is a hard one The good news is that this is probably...
Fact Simile
Cliche One of the most frequent pieces of advice given to new writers is to avoid cliche. Of course, we also tell them to learn the rules of grammar and syntax, structure their persuasive essays "Issue, Rule, Application, Conclusion," and avoid long sentences. You'll...
20/20 Hindsight
Stay awhile, and listen. That's a line from a character in one of my most-played (I have no idea if it's my favorite but WOW did I play it a lot) (that's a pun, shoutout to the five people who got it) video games. Besides being a scratchy little soundbite from ages...
If it ain’t broken…
Welcome to 2020 We've been running the poetry slam for, oh my gosh, five years now? That's five times twelve, minus the critique post, carry the haiku... um... at least fifty different types of poetry. And it occurred to us that we'd spent so much time on "how to...
Year of Fearless Writing – So you’re a writer; now what?
Welcome to the Year of Fearless Writing! You write. I mean, that's why you're here. But how often do you say "I'm a writer?" And what's the difference between "I write" and "I'm a writer" anyway? Over the last five years, YeahWrite--besides being a great place to...
Another Chance to Get it Right
Well, it's December again. Like every year, I had the best intentions. I was going to write more. Specifically, I was going to write more poetry. I like what the process of writing poetry does for my brain. It makes me more concise, more richly metaphorical, and it...
Kimo or no?
That doesn't count How many times have you said that? But counting is one of a poet's best tools. Even in poetic forms without rhyme or meter, we're often counting words in a line, lines in a stanza, stanzas in a ... you get the picture. The most famous thing that...
Year of Fearless Writing – Time Confetti
Welcome to the Year of Fearless Writing! You write. I mean, that's why you're here. But how often do you say "I'm a writer?" And what's the difference between "I write" and "I'm a writer" anyway? Over the last five years, YeahWrite--besides being a great place to...
Year of Fearless Writing – Don’t quit your day job (or maybe do)
Welcome to the Year of Fearless Writing! You write. I mean, that's why you're here. But how often do you say "I'm a writer?" And what's the difference between "I write" and "I'm a writer" anyway? Over the last five years, YeahWrite--besides being a great place to...
Alas, poor Yorick
... the five of you who know that the next line is "I knew him, Horatio" not "I knew him well" are feeling pretty smug right now, aren't you? Laugh while you can, because this month's poetry slam is no joking matter. Like Hamlet, we're going to elegize. eulogize?...
Year of Fearless Writing – MFA? OMG.
Welcome to the Year of Fearless Writing! You write. I mean, that's why you're here. But how often do you say "I'm a writer?" And what's the difference between "I write" and "I'm a writer" anyway? Over the last five years, YeahWrite--besides being a great place to...
Sing me a song
Poetry is music is poetry It's kind of a no-brainer, right? Music and poetry go hand in hand: they are both designed to appeal to the emotions. More precisely, a poet or musician is attempting to manipulate your emotions so that you feel what they want you to feel....