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Those who post in The Ink Well find out one thing fast: we are here to help writers improve. You will likely hear from us when we believe you have something to work on — whether it's character development, grammar, a missing story arc, or other important elements of quality fiction. Ae're amazed by the continual growth of skills and writing quality in The Ink Well!
Over the many months since The Ink Well community launched, we've been writing tips to support our community members in their writing journey. Here you will find a catalog of topics. Please refer to this list anytime you are looking for inspiration or ideas for how you can continue to build your skills and improve your craft.
Catalog of Fiction Writing Tips
We've organized the tips in broad categories to help you quickly find what you're looking for.
Getting Started
- Putting Words on the Page
- Writing from a Prompt
- What Is 'Writing Voice'?
- Fiction Genres
- Fiction is Like Weaving
Writing Basics
- Story Settings
- Hook Your Readers
- Plots in Short Fiction
- Action, Dialogue and Narrative: The Dynamic Trio
- Adding Conflict
- Story Arcs
- Character Types
- Character Descriptions
- Developing Memorable Characters
- How to Write Dialogue in Fiction
"Do's and Don'ts" of Fiction Writing
IMPORTANT NOTE: An important thing to remember in the "do's and don'ts" category is to consider the audience you are writing for, and to heed the "writer's guidelines" for any publication or platform you write for.
For example in The Ink Well, we require published stories to avoid themes of brutality, rape, abuse and violence. Please see the first article below for our stance on this in The Ink Well Community.
- Avoid Violence and Brutality (in stories for The Ink Well)
- Avoid the 'Info Dump'
- 'Show, Don't Tell'
- Don't Start a Story This Way
- How to Reveal Information in Fiction
- Avoid Cliches
- Banish Stereotypes
- Don't Plagiarize!
- Don't Write This Kind of Mystery
- Avoid Author Intrusion
- Don't Use the "It Was Just a Dream" Escape Hatch
Improving Your Skills and Overcoming Challenges
- Overcoming Writer's Block
- The Value of Workshops
- What Are Plotters and Pantsers?
- Do Short Stories Require a Plot?
- Getting Unstuck
- Help for the Grammatically Challenged
- Editing Your Work with Fresh Eyes
- Lessons in Tense
Writing Inspiration
- Writing What You Know
- Stunning Writing Examples
- Exploring World Building
- What Does it Take to Be a Fiction Writer?
We hope you find something useful here that helps you — whether you have challenges to overcome, or you want to take your writing to a new level.
@jayna, @agmoore, and @gracielaacevedo
We would like to invite lovers of creative writing to visit The Ink Well, a Hive community started by @raj808 and @stormlight24 and run by @jayna, @agmoore and @gracielaacevedo .
We also invite you to follow The Ink Well curation trail on the Hive blockchain, at https://hive.vote/. Simply navigate to the curation trail section and search for theinkwell (all one word with no @ symbol) and our trail will pop up as an option.
Similarly delegations are possible on Hive using the fantastic https://peakd.com/ Hive Blockchain front end. If you wish to delegate to @theinkwell, you can do this from the wallet section of https://peakd.com/
@jayna, @agmoore, @gracielaacevedo, @iamraincrystal, @generikat, @marlyncabrera, @owasco, @preparedwombat, @marcybetancourt, @zeurich, @barge, @lacrucita, @stormcharmer, @adncabrera, @vision-of-esca, @josemalavem, @morey-lezama, @sayury, @rypo01, @evagavilan2 and @bertrayo.
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A very useful resource!
I'm glad you will find it useful, @fionasfavourites! Does this mean we will be seeing a short story from you in The Ink Well?
Ummm....possibly. I don't know. I have some stuff that needs turning into stories... No promises 🤦🏼♀️
One habit I find useful is to just write a vignette of a character and a situation, and then see where it takes me. Sometimes the story then begins to take on a life of its own, and I no longer have to question whether or not to write.
I have one of those written. It became a little harrowing. I have run away!
I am toying with stories around our animal characters. The cats... Toying, I emphasize. 🤣
You can do it, @fionasfavourites. :-)
I like this community, it is one of the best I have seen and participate in. The growth of the community and the users should be the goal of all.
Keep it up.
I agree wholeheartedly, @ricardo993. We are here to create a great community around quality fiction. Over time we are seeing amazing things happen here. It's very exciting!
Thank you for sharing this guide. It is informative and can help beginner writers.
Thanks very much for visiting The Ink Well, @curiousson. If you write short stories, we look forward to seeing one.
I will embark on writing story too, but it might take for a while. I will definitely post one in #theinkwell.
@jayna I hope it's not out of line to mention, but I am also running a tiny (but slowly growing? I hope?) worldbuilding community over at C/Worldbuilding, where I provide weekly worldbuilding topics with daily prompts, as well as some worldbuilding guides to help newcomers to the hobby. I don't immediately see much about that side of writing in your super handy list of tips.
If this is not appropriate to mention please let me know and I'd happily edit this comment. You folks have a wonderful list here and I'm sure it's going to be a bookmark I use.
Hi @oblivioncubed. Nice to meet you. Thanks for sharing that! We try to provide a well-rounded set of tips for fiction writers, from character development to dialog to conflict. You'll find our one article on world building above under the Writing Inspiration category.
That's neat that you have a whole community around world building. I will check it out.
Awesome! I hope you find it useful. My more in-depth worldbuilding guides are typically pinned to my profile. Anyone can x-post content into the community if it has any element of worldbuilding, even though it's super small right now and folks might want to make their main post in places like here or freewriters.
Thanks for checking it out!
Thank you, I am getting the hang of the prompts and trying to pick them one by one. I hope to do them all by posting 4-5 in a week. Thanks for such wonderful tips and a large choice of prompt topics :)
Thank you so much for these. It is very helpful to me.
Thank you so much! Already bookmarked this. 😍
Great tips.
I find them very useful
Excited to check all these out to help me improve and contribute to this community.
According to your instructions, I read these tips and copied them, and also saved them with me.
Now in the future, I will write according to the suggestions given in them. Thanks a lot
Very helpful
This is a great community. I am hoping for a speedy growth.
These are great guideline.. I'm a young writer.. I do appreciate you checking up on me and correcting me..thanks a lot
Saving this 😊
Good evening, I did not know about such a community and now that I read about it, I would like to join, especially because I think that sometimes it is difficult for the ideas of the head to go to the written document, I hope to improve hand in hand with the community.
Is the content entirely in English?
How nice to have all of this in one place!! Thanks!
thank you for this @theinkwell
I'm new here and i love what i'm seeing and reading. Thanks for sharing this helpful tips.
What a wonderful comment, @ubani1! So glad you enjoy and benefit from the community.