Today, we talk about rules you can ignore, so your writing life becomes a little easier, and perhaps your writing even gets better, too. Your job as a writer is to communicate your ideas. To allow readers to visualize your story and feel your words. So your number one rule is to write for your readers. Writing is not about sticking to grammar rules. Writing is about communicating ideas with clarity.

Writers mostly use the active voice. It brings our words to life with its immediacy and accountability. As authors, we are taking responsibility and not distancing ourselves from our words. We tend to bore readers when we use the passive voice.

How important are character names? Does it really matter what we choose? Or how we go about deciding? Should we draw names out of hat? Or should we wait until exact names are revealed to us in a dream? I truly believe the naming process will be unique for each of us. But . . . I do think there are some general principles we can employ when deciding on character names.

Whether you just love to write for the fun of it, or you want to use it as an additional source of income that will boost your budget, finding the time to actually do so if you are working a full-time job can seem next to impossible. You’ve tried to look online for some advice on how to pull it off, but that’s probably not helping, because all you’re getting is clichés like “you don’t want it bad enough”, “where there is a will, there is a way”, or tips which tell you to put your writing above everything — even your friends and family! Everything besides your day job, of course. Forget everything you’ve read so far. You CAN and you WILL do it.

We can divide a story into a beginning, which is roughly a quarter of a book, a middle, which is half the book, and an end, which is the last quarter. This last part of your book is your reader’s reward for going on this journey with you. It is the part we remember because it has, or should have, the most drama in it. Here are five tips, which all of these authors used, that will help you to end a story so that readers will want to read your next book.

Want to write legal thrillers? Or put a courtroom scene in your novel? Movies portray juries listening to evidence and lawyers’ arguments, but there is much to understanding the roles and responsibilities of a juror.

Storyboarding as it pertains to novels and short stories is the process of mapping out your story, often using index cards, in a high-level way that allows you to see your story visually and rearrange it. Scrivener’s corkboard view provides the perfect interface to storyboard your novel digitally.