Skip to content

Writing Academy Blog

Writing Tips & Links

Menu
  • Home
  • What is Writing Academy?
  • The Write Stuff Blog
  • Topics
    • Children’s Books
    • History
    • Marketing
    • Mysteries
    • Non-Fiction
    • Romance
    • Screenwriting
    • Self-Publishing
    • Traditional Publishing
    • Young Adult Books
  • Writing Tips
    • Beginnings & Endings
    • Characters
    • Dialogue
    • Scenes
    • Setting
    • Structure
    • Wordcraft
  • Classes
Menu

Guest Post: My Indie Journey

Posted on November 12, 2019November 12, 2019 by Jo Holloway

I’m an indie. It’s not a decision I made lightly, but in the end, I chose the independent publishing route. It’s my path. I’ve called myself type A, or a control freak, or whatever the latest jargon is, but basically, I like to do things myself. I’m also impatient. That said, I know two things:…

Guest Post: Challenges with Writing & Illustrating My Second Children’s Book, Breathe, Mustard, Breathe!

Posted on September 23, 2019September 18, 2019 by Jeremy Ross

I would like to extend an appreciation to Dani and Steve Alcorn for allowing me to share a free copy of my second book, Breathe, Mustard, Breathe! with the excellent Writing Academy community, as well as a few key lessons I learned in writing and illustrating my second book. Breathe, Mustard, Breathe! simply teaches our…

Free (and Lower-Cost) Alternatives to Final Draft

Posted on June 24, 2019June 24, 2019 by Dani Alcorn

Formatting a screenplay is A LOT of work. Theoretically, I suppose you could do it in a word processor, but it would take ten times as long and drive you crazy. That means screenwriters rely on software to do the heavy lifting so we can focus our energy on the important parts (you know, character…

Staging is Murder: A Student Success Story

Posted on April 30, 2019November 20, 2020 by steve

by Grace Topping Today marks the launch of my mystery, Staging is Murder. It’s been a long road to publication, and I honestly don’t think I would have succeeded without Steve Alcorn’s course on mystery writing. It gave me a solid foundation on which to build. Without that foundation, I probably would have given up….

Scene and Sequel

Posted on March 30, 2019March 30, 2019 by steve

By Melinda Goodin Those who have read my work know that my stories tend to start with a bang — literally. If it’s not a space station exploding, it’s a church catching on fire or a laboratory or… And the pace gets faster from there. Critiquers have often commented that they ended up feeling breathless…

Cover of nobody loves mustard

Lessons Learned: Writing & Illustrating an Amazon Best-Selling Children’s Picture Book

Posted on March 25, 2019February 28, 2019 by Jeremy Ross

To begin, I would like to take this opportunity to thank Dani Alcorn for inviting me to write a guest blog post for Writing Academy. My debut children’s picture book, Nobody Loves Mustard, unexpectedly became: An Amazon Best Selling New Release A Number 1 Best Seller (Top 100 Free) A Number 1 Best Seller (Top…

What to Do About ‘Or’?

Posted on March 18, 2019March 13, 2019 by Ellen Feld

Today let’s talk about how to make sure subjects and verbs agree when a word like “or” comes into play. There can be more to this than meets the eye. This grammar game begins with a few terms to help you keep the rules in hand. The subject is the person, thing, or idea directing…

How to Get Over Yourself, Grammatically Speaking

Posted on March 11, 2019November 20, 2020 by Ellen Feld

Myself. Yourself. Herself. Himself. Itself. Ourselves. Themselves. Yourselves. What are these words and how do we use them? They’re pronouns. (Quick refresher: Pronouns step in for nouns. They save us lots of boring repetition.) “Mrs. Smith baked a pie, and she shared it with her first grade class.” Without pronouns, look what happens to this…

Effective Ways to use ‘Affect’ in a Sentence (or Affecting uses of ‘Effect’)

Posted on March 4, 2019November 20, 2020 by Ellen Feld

If you do a search for “most common grammar errors,” the affect/effect duo is going to turn up. These two words are homophones. That means they sound alike. Well, they’re almost homophones; though not identical, they sound very much alike. We can see the difference in their spellings, but we don’t always hear it when…

Advanced Twitter

Posted on February 19, 2019February 19, 2019 by Dani Alcorn

Since my last post about Twitter I’ve learned A LOT! Hashtags Hashtags make the Twitter-world go round. A hashtag is something that “tags” a post. It’s preceded by the pound symbol (#) and cannot include any spaces. You can search for hashtags on Twitter and also use them to help people find you. I’ve added…

Posts navigation

  • Previous
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • …
  • 11
  • Next

Categories

  • Classes (7)
  • The Write Stuff Blog (6)
  • Topics (56)
    • Children's Books (18)
    • Critiques (1)
    • History (4)
    • Marketing (20)
    • Mysteries (4)
    • Non-Fiction (5)
    • Publishing (18)
      • Audiobooks (1)
      • Indie (1)
      • Self-Publishing (11)
      • Traditional Publishing (10)
    • Romance (3)
    • Screenwriting (5)
    • Young Adult Books (9)
  • Writing Tips (56)
    • Beginnings & Endings (3)
    • Characters (9)
    • Dialogue (3)
    • Editing (1)
    • Grammar (3)
    • Keys to Success (2)
    • Scenes (3)
    • Setting (4)
    • Structure (12)
    • Wordcraft (10)

Recent Posts

  • Hook Kids’ Attention With Your Writing
  • Hook Your Readers With Tension
  • 9 Tips for Writing Stories
  • Three Act Structure Chart
  • Intensive Research Is Important for Children”s Nonfiction
  • Why Write Screenplays?
  • Analysis: Moana (2016)
  • Tips for Working/Writing from Home
  • Analysis: The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang
  • Guest Post: Applying 3-Act Structure to a Picture Book

Archives

©2021 Writing Academy Blog | Built using WordPress and Responsive Blogily theme by Superb