Big events alone do not a memorable story make. Celeste Ng on why certain stories succeed, and leave a lasting impression.

Yesterday we talked about a tool to help you analyze your writing for “flabbiness” or “fitness” based on your use of prepositions, adjective and adverbs, and so on. But could analyzing your writing tell you something about your mental fitness, too?
Researchers now believe that they may be able to detect the early signs of [...]

Is your writing lean and trim? Or does it need to shed some flab? Recently, user Leigh posted on FWR’s Facebook wall about an interesting writing-analysis tool, WritersDiet. Intrigued, I clicked on over. WritersDiet is a free online tool that analyzes a sample of your text. Paste in any text [...]

This is a little revision device I’ve whipped up to try to tell if a paragraph or page or section is too soft or vulnerable, if it needs to be edited out. Or if it’s too autobiographical in a way that could lead to questioning from my grandmother’s bridge club.
You know how, after you’ve sent [...]

Before submitting stories to workshop in graduate school, I spent hours combing my sentences for inefficiencies. I scrutinized verbs. I wrenched clauses from passive construction. I asked myself some hard questions about adjectives. My classmates often called my writing “clean,” which pleased me. I aspired toward concision.
One term workshop was led by an intimidating man [...]

Editor’s note: As part of our focus on teaching this month, we’re delighted to present this guest post by Richard Goodman.
When a writer publishes a book about writing, I’m often excited to read it.  Especially if it’s by a writer whom I admire.  He or she has been in the trenches, encountered problems and, more [...]

When I heard The Great Gatsby had been rewritten for intermediate readers, I did what many lovers of the novel probably did—checked the online version to see how my favorite passage had been changed, shook my fist, and then re-read the original, penciling all kinds of ecstatic remarks into the margins.
In case you missed Celeste’s [...]

Most writers agree that in order to write, you must also read. Author Allison Winn Scotch raised this point in a recent blog post titled just that:
I think being a successful writer means reading your peers and learning from them too – I can’t tell you how much reading authors whom I admire has [...]

Every writing student has probably heard Mark Twain’s adage “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is like the difference between the lighting and the lightning bug.” But for a really striking example of the difference word choice can make, the Utne Reader turns to a surprising place: the police [...]

The classic The Things They Carried is being re-released in honor of its 20th anniversary, so unsurprisingly, Tim O’Brien keeps popping up in my radar lately. Besides being a powerful writer, O’Brien is also a great teacher, and in his recent interviews he offers useful thoughts for writers of all levels.
In this interview for [...]