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When we writers discuss fiction, we usually focus on plot, setting, dialogue, and especially characters. These, of course, are the essential elements of decent storytelling. But what we often forget to address is the prose.

The words we choose to depict action, express characters' thoughts, and render their dialogue is another important, albeit often overlooked, element of storytelling.

Language can raise a story to new heights or it can make a story sink. If readers are struggling to understand words and phrases or if they're constantly distracted by unnecessary words and repetition, the story will take a backseat to the poorly constructed prose, and you'll risk losing the readers.

No matter how compelling your story is, if you can't convey it through well crafted prose, it will get lost in the slush pile and end up in the discount bin. Today's fiction writing exercises encourage you to set story aside and focus instead on the language, which is at the very heart of the craft of writing.

Fiction Writing Exercises: Practice in Prose

These fiction writing exercises encourage you to dig into the marrow of your writing - the language. You'll need a few pieces of your own writing; they can be drafts or polished pieces. Choose one exercise below or tackle all of them.
Exercise One: Modifier Madness
Start with a short story or a scene you've completed. Use about five pages of narrative. Go through the piece and highlight all adjectives and adverbs. Now read it back without those modifiers. Did it lose meaning? Did some sentences gain strength because they weren't weighed down with unnecessary detail? Look for adjective-noun and adverb-verb combinations that you can replace with more vivid nouns and verbs. For example, running quickly becomes sprinting. If you're struggling to replace words that aren't working, use the thesaurus.
Exercise Two: Dialogue Diversions
Find a dialogue scene in a story you've written. Make a copy of the scene and strip away the action and description, leaving only the dialogue. Use a different color of highlighting for each character's dialogue so you can easily distinguish them from each other (for example, yellow for character A, green for character B, etc.).

Read one character's dialogue aloud, skipping the other characters' lines. Is the character's manner of speech consistent? Does the character use any dialect or catch phrases that make his or her speech patterns distinguishable? Is the dialogue peppered with filler words like um and well? Does it sound like natural speech? Does it reflect the character's background, education, and social status?

Read all of the characters' dialogue aloud (better yet, get a friend to help so each of you can read different characters' lines). Is each character's dialogue distinct from the other characters? Does the conversation flow? Does it stay on topic or go off on tangents? Do the characters refer to each by name too often (people don't usually refer to each other by name in real life)?

Exercise Three: Rhythm and Pacing
Pull one to three pages of narrative from a story that's in progress or completed. Make a copy of it and format it with double line spacing so you have plenty of room to work between the lines. Print it out. Now go through and count the words in each sentence and make a note of the word count at the beginning of each sentence. Then go through and count the syllables in each sentence and make a note of the syllable count at the end of each sentence. Use different color pens for word count and syllable count or use highlighters so you can easily tell the difference.

Do you tend to write short or long sentences? Do your sentences vary in length or does the rhythm drone in a repetitive manner? Could you link two short sentences together to make a single, longer sentence? Can you break up any long sentences into two or more shorter sentences?
Did these fiction writing exercises help you view your prose in a new light? Which exercise did you tackle? Do you have any tips for crafting compelling prose? Share your thoughts by leaving a comment.

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Fiction Writing Exercises: The Power of Prose

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When we writers discuss fiction, we usually focus on plot, setting, dialogue, and especially characters. These, of course, are the essential elements of decent storytelling. But what we often forget to address is the prose. The words we choose to depict action, express characters' thoughts, and render their dialogue is another important, albeit often overlooked, element of storytelling.

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Take a Dow Jones dry run Help your students prepare for the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund editing test by letting them practice on actual exams from previous years. You can also use the tests as classroom exercises. Answer keys included, as well as information on how the tests are graded.

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Since 1997, FreelanceWriting.com has delivered daily and real-time freelance writing jobs online for freelance beginners and experts. We are the #1 source for freelance writing jobs. Please read our tips below to help you land work, and use our filters to narrow the results as you please. Are you an employer? Use our "Hire Freelancers" button to submit jobs to our platform, and get high quality content from our exclusive hub of the internet's best writers.

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Freelance Writing Jobs - Real-Time Updates - Find a Job Now | FreelanceWriting

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Since 1997, FreelanceWriting.com has delivered daily and real-time freelance writing jobs online for freelance beginners and experts. We are the #1 source for freelance writing jobs. Please read our tips below to help you land work, and use our filters to narrow the results as you please. Are you an employer?

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Skyword offers is a writing platform that connects writers to some big name clients, including IBM and the Wall Street Journal. In addition, to up-front payment, they also offer residual payments to their writers, so you can keep earning long after you've written your article.

I wrote a review of Skyword some time ago so take a look at that article to refresh your memory if you need it. One of the great things is that at Skyword there is give and take between the writers and editors as well as the writers and clients. It's just an all-around great place to work with and if you haven't already checked them out you should.

To briefly review, you need a good solid sample when applying in general and then will need an additional topic related sample for each partner. It's a really simple process and completely painless.

Finding Work

Start with your profile. This is your Skyword resume (and they want one of those too!) that program managers see. Sill this profile out entirely and upload your resume and clips. Once you have done this you will have to wait. It can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks to be contacted and invited into a program. Most people are initially invited into the Gather News Program.

Gather News is highly rated and ranked with Google so it's a great place to develop a following of readers as well as being one of the best places to learn great SEO and online news writing. You are paid based on the page views and will have the best luck if you stick with trending topics; more about that in a second.

Invitations to other programs generally pay an upfront fee as well as a page view fee. These pay anywhere from $35 up to $50 per article depending on the program and the client needs. Some white papers can pay as much as $250.

Trending Topics

To build your brand and gain readers for your writing, it is vitally important to pay attention to trending topics. Within the Skyword writing platform, there is a button that allows you to check the current trending topics on Google and select a topic based on what will both meet your program criteria as well as your interest. Always try and aim for topics that are trending but seem to have a lengthy lifespan. The longer it's hot the more you will earn on the page views.

Skyword Partners

The partners that Skyword works with are some of the top brands in the marketplace. The Livestrong brand was one of the earliest to partner and others quickly followed suit. Companies like Lowes, Canon, MasterCard and even Staples. These top level companies offer great pay, a byline and an incredible chance for exposure. New opportunities within these programs are available frequently and this is why it's so important to keep your profile sharp and updated.

The Writing Platform

Skyword has one of the best online writing platforms on the Internet for writers. When you decide to write an article you simply click on the create button and move to the Topic creation page. Here you create a title, write a brief summary and create a keyword. The site will automatically make sure that your article is unique and after doing so you will be taken to the main writing page. You typically have two hours from this point to create your article. So be sure to not start the process until you are ready to write.

You have a lot of options here. You have text formatting options and can even create special characters. You can also add photos and include links. The writing platform will keep a tally of the word count for you as well.

Where Skyword stands out far above all other online writing platforms is in its integration of an SEO analyzer that will kick in as soon as you finish your article. All articles are essentially a rough draft until you click to evaluate the article. You cannot submit the article until this evaluation has been completed. This is a really cool addition to the platform as it looks at spelling, grammar and SEO. You correct any problems and then evaluate it again before submitting.

At the end of the article is a text box that allows you to send a message to your editor. This is really helpful when submitting articles with strange or foreign spellings. Just let your editor know that you double checked the spelling and they are correct. Once submitted the editing turnaround is generally within an hour or two for the news programs. Other programs may have a bit longer wait but it's typically not long.

Payment is simple and straightforward. Payments are made via PayPal on the 1 st and 15 th of each month for both the accrued page views and upfront article payments. There have never been any issues with writers being paid on time or being shorted here. When in doubt Skyword tends to err in favor of the writer.

Editing at Skyword

Editing here is a flat out dream. There is easy back and forth between the writer and the program editor, issues are discussed and you have plenty of flexibility in your articles. Each program has a specific manager and you can contact them at any time with questions and for clarification. If there are necessary changes the editor will inform the writer and give clean instructions as to the issues. Unlike most sites, I have never heard a complaint about the editors here.

Where is the money?

Writing for the News program can bring in a nice amount of money. But the upfront payments and the big money is typically in the partner programs. But don't just sit back and wait for an open application time or an invitation to one of the programs. Most of the writers invited to the top dollar programs are pulled from the Gather News Program. Once you are accepted into the News program write as often as a trending topic piques your interest. Try and write at least one article a day whenever possible. The more you write the more attention you will get from the program editors.

Putting it all together

Okay, you now have all the necessary information to make a success of writing at Skyword. Here is how to put it all together quickly and efficiently:

Apply to Skyword and as soon as you are accepted complete your profile and add your resume and samples. Try to include as wide a range of sample types as possible.

Apply to Gather News as soon as there is a chance to do so. Once accepted start writing and try to write at least one article per day. These articles don't have to be very long, 300-400 words is fine.

Be on the alert for any partner programs that open for application and apply to any that interest you. Beyond that you have to wait for an invitation. Don't be discouraged if it takes a few weeks to get an invite. Generally speaking, the more you write and the better you write the faster the invitations will present themselves.

That's it for being a success at Skyword. I recommend that as many new writers as possible write for Skyword if for no other reason than this site gives new Internet writers a virtually painless way to learn outstanding SEO practices that will serve you well. In fact, after a few articles you will naturally begin to write ALL of your online articles with these techniques as they become second nature. If you write for more than one site you will find that you SEO will improve for all of those sites.

All writing sites have their positives and negatives and Skyword is no different. In addition to the SEO training program and the best writing platform on the Internet, the positives are that you can make some great money, get incredible exposure and develop a wide readership under your own byline. The downside is that you may have to wait a bit for the best opportunities to present themselves. But as everyone knows, good things come to those who wait. So if you haven't already, give Skyword a hard look. Take a look at the full review for all the particulars and get started writing today!

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Skyword offers is a writing platform that connects writers to some big name clients, including IBM and the Wall Street Journal. In addition, to up-front payment, they also offer residual payments to their writers, so you can keep earning long after you've written your article.

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Inside Creative Writing with Robert Olen Butler - YouTube

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Learn the art of storytelling from Pulitzer Prize winning author and FSU Eppes Professor Robert Olen Butler as he writes an original short story.

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One of the perks of creating fantasy stories -- whether by writing a story or game or by role-playing -- is you get to make up the names. Some people relish the task while others are frustrated by it. Some like it but can't seem to create names that are diverse enough.

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The following literary journals regularly publish emerging writers and sometimes publish new writers ( emerging meaning writers who have not yet published a book, and new meaning writers who have not yet published in journals). Always read a journal's submission guidelines carefully! Go to the FAQs page for more info on submitting.

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Writing, writing competitions, self-publishing book, publish your book

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Why You Should Write for Literary Journals

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Why You Should Write for Literary Journals

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When I was first starting out as a writer, I had no desire to submit to literary journals. I did not really understand what function they served. I also didn't know how many there were out there; I just thought they were a small niche marketplace.

I had a few publications which were mostly in places where I knew the editor and my work was solicited from me. This sounds nice and easy, but it is actually less rewarding if you know the person in charge of a publication. You always wonder if they chose your work just because they liked you.

When I got to graduate school I discovered very quickly why having your work published in literary journals was important, regardless of what genre you wrote. It was a stamp of approval, a way of making it clear that you were not a novice. It also made it easier to publish work in the future.

The first reason that you should start submitting to journals is that agents and publishers are more likely to sign a contract with an author who has a track record.

I had written many query letters before I started submitting to journals, and my author's bio was always depressingly empty. Once I started to publish my work in literary journals, I started to get the attention of agents and publishers in a way I hadn't before.

Novice writers often complain to me about the expectations of agents and publishers for pre-existing publications. They tell me about how complicated it makes getting the first book published. If they started to submit short stories and excerpts of their novels to journals for publication, they would have a solid stepping stone towards getting their first book published.

The second reason you should submit to journals is that it can actually attract agents to you or create a direct connection with a publisher.

I know several authors who have received queries from agents after getting their piece published in a prestigious journal. If the journal is well-respected it can even lead the agent or the publisher to you.

Other journals like Tin House and The Fiddleback have a manuscript press attached to the journal. These manuscript presses almost always end up publishing authors whose work appeared in their journals first.

The third reason that you should submit to journals is, as a general rule the more you are published the easier it is to get more work published.

Now when I submit my work to a respected journal I am no longer a poet without publications, but one who has appeared in many prestigious journals. I don't know if that alters the editor's opinion, but it probably encouraged them to examine my work more closely. My work certainly receives more acceptance and appears in more prestigious journals every year.

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" Why You Should Submit to Literary Journals

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When I was first starting out as a writer, I had no desire to submit to literary journals. I did not really understand what function they served. I also didn't know how many there were out there; I just thought they were a small niche marketplace.