Writing Resources

Writing Your Synopsis

• It’s hard. It’s no fun. And no one does a perfect job the first few drafts, but it must be done…or so many agents say in the querying world. Make a point to research as many sites as possible. Here are some useful links to the ones I used…

  • Mastering The Dreadful Synopsis

  • The Art of the Pitch & Synopsis

  • How To Write A Synopsis Agents Will Notice

  • Learn from the Classics: Les Miserables Summary

  • Learn from the Classics: War & Peace

Writing Poetry

• Poetry was/is my first language. To me, it just makes sense. Here are some of my favorite resources…

  • Poetry Daily

  • Poetry Foundation (find poems, craft essays, and more!)

  • Association of Writing and Writing Programs (annual conference)

  • Heavy Feather Review (where to submit poems, short stories, essays, and more!)

  • Twenty Two Poem Hacks (poem revision tips)

  • The Diptych as Short-Form Memoir (exploring diptych poetry)

  • Ama Codjoe (cool poet to know; interview)

  • K. Iver (cool poet to know; interview)

  • Matthew Olzman (cool poet to know; reading poem live)

  • Richard Hugo (cool poet; essay on poetic theory)

  • Ilya Kaminsky (cool poet; interview; collection of poems)

Writing Communities and Workshops

Writing communities come in so many different shapes and sizes—some are local, distant, ongoing, workshops, seminars, and beyond. Here are some great resources for open writing villages I’ve been introduced to…

• Writing Classes

• Writers (classes, community, and instructors)

• Writing Institute Courses

• Yale Writer’s Workshop

• Best Online Creative Writing Workshop

• Loft (classes)

• Writer’s Online Workshops

• Inprint Writer’s Workshops

• Grub Street (creative writing resources)

• Time Out (17 best NYC writing classes)

• Write on Frisco (workshops and summer camps)

• Firefly Creative Writing (fiction workshop)

• Sarah Selecky Writing School (story courses)

• Revision Love

• The Shipman Agency

Writing Your Book (Editing, Revising, & Other Useful Tips)

My best writing friend turned me on to some sites I’ll be forever grateful she included in each of her critiques of my early work. Referring back to the notes I learned here saved me a lot of trouble from tripping over the same mistakes allowing her to save time reminding me to stop making them, and me opportunities to make new ones.

Passive vs Active Voice

• Passive Voice

• Active vs. Passive Voice

• How To Fix Passive Voice

Grammar Rule Reminders:

• How Filter Words Make Your Writing Boring

• The Item In A Series

• You’ll Have To Go Through Me: Eliminating Filter Words

• Participial Phrases? C’mon, You Made That Up

• Revisiting Dangling Modifiers

• 8 Words To Seek and Destroy In Your Writing

• Single Quotation Marks - A Reader’s Question

• Avoid Capital Offenses When Using Job Titles

• Mass Communications 210 Media Writing (AP Style Courtesy & Professional Titles)

• Not To Be: Removing Be Verbs From Your Writing

• The Best Punctuation Book, Period.

• Do or Do Not. There is No Try: Clarifying What Your Characters Do

• Woe Is I: The Grammarphobe's Guide to Better English in Plain English

• Dreyer's English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style

• Don’t Use Adverbs and Adjectives to Prettify Your Prose

Dialogue:

• Punctuation In Dialogue (Dialogue has it’s own rules for punctuation. Learn them now!)

• More Punctuation In Dialogue: A Reader’s Question

• Even More Punctuation In Dialogue: A Reader’s Question

• Inner Dialogue: Writing Character Thoughts

• Your Guide To Writing Great Dialogue

• 9 Rules For Writing Dialogue

• 6 Insanely Good Dialogue Tips

• Get Rid of On-the-Nose Dialogue Once and For All

• Internal Dialogue (Busy Writer’s Guide)

Info Dumping:

• Chekhov’s Gun: What It Is And How To Use It Like A Pro

• How To Avoid Info Dumping

• More About Info Dumping

• What Is Info Dumping and How To Avoid It

Master Plots and Master Writing:

• What Is “Conflict”?

• What Writers Mean By “Flow”

• The Dreaded Middle Story Block

• How To Become A Masterful Writer, With John Gardner

• Writing Exercises from John Gardner’s “The Art of Fiction”

• Campbell’s Hero’s Journey

• Writing Sequels (NOT Book #2!)

• 20 Master Plots (And How To Build Them)

• 20 Master Plot Exercises

• Writing the Other Resources

• Heroine Journeys (Exploring and Documenting Life-Affirming Alternatives to the Hero's Journey)
  

Feelings and Description:

• Power Thesaurus

• Descriptionari

• Describing Words (like a thesaurus but better)

• Story Writing: Biggest Writing Myths (& Other Resources)

• Emotion Thesaurus

• Onomatopoeic Sound List

• Body Language Master List

• Cheat Sheet for Body Language

• How To Write Sounds (Onomatopoeia Examples)

Writing Your Query

I hate writing queries. I say that in plural because I think I probably had about a dozen for each of the novels I’ve pitched. They’re hard. There’s no formula to apply from all the templates and “successful” examples I read. Some readers claimed them to be “too stiff,” others “too loose.” What the hell do they want?! I’ll let you know when I land an agent, but until then, I’ll share some of the links and books I worked with.

• Author Checklist: 17 Simple Steps To The Best Book Summary In Your Query Letter

• Tips for Queriers: The Query, the Synopsis, and the First Page

• Your Query Letter: Write A Fantastic First Line

• The Writer's Digest Guide To Query Letters Ebook

• QueryTracker: Great resource for tracking all the queries you’re going to send out (which will be A LOT!)

Query and Rejection

As of this date, I’ve been rejected so many times, I stopped counting. It hurts and some days I’ve tried to talk myself into giving up/quitting. Except…what would I do next?! I don’t know…so…here are some pick-me-ups…

• We Need to Talk About Professional Jealousy

• Writers On Dealing with Rejection

Literary Magazines to Query

I have tried so many times to organize all of the magazines I’ve queried. Finally, I’ve decided to compile a list of them…

• Poetica

• Apex Magazine

• Brittle Paper 

• Plume Poetry

• Have Has Had

• Poetic Substack

• Chill Subs

• Heavy Feather Review

• 483 Literary Magazines for Short Fiction

• SFWA Market Report August 2023

• Horror Tree

• Published to Death

• Poets and Writers Literary Magazines

• New Pages

Special Thanks…

There are a ton of links and sites I’ve used that don’t necessarily fall into the neat categories above. For now, I’ll put them here. When/if I find more content on a specific topic, I’ll definitely create a more personable subtitle.

• Inked Voices - online critique forum…because your friends and family usually don’t give you the hard truth you need to get better!

• D.M. Weade - one of my critique buddies (and writing support system) has a great selection of resources for writing and creative outlets beyond those mentioned above. I’ve found a lot of awesome content from his site as it inspired the creation of this page.

• Reedsy - Need an editor, publicist, ghost-writer, marketer, or designer? This is the place…

• Jane Friedman - because she’s a guru and has an article on just about every topic related to the literary world.

• Canva - Check out this simplified graphic-design tool, founded in 2012. It uses a drag-and-drop format and provides access to photographs, vector images, graphics, and fonts. It is used by non-designers as well as professionals. The tools can be used for both web and print media design and graphics.

• How Some Male Authors Described Women In Books - This is out of mere fun. I want to believe not all male writers are like this.