Best Articles

Below you’ll find some of the more popular articles from Write It Sideways.

Writing the Right Story vs Writing the Story Right

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*Please check out my guest article, Cut the Comparisons: 3 Ways to Embrace Your Unique Path, today at Change Your Thoughts. Ever feel you might be writing the wrong story? Let’s say you have a great premise and the characters are fully realized in your own mind. You rush to get something down on the

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101 of the Best Fiction Writing Tips, Part I

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What if someone went through the biggest and best blogs on the internet, and pulled out the very best-of-the best tips for fiction writers? That’s what I’ve attempted to do here. I can’t guarantee there aren’t some amazingly helpful writing tips that I haven’t included, but this is a good start. I’ve also tried to

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3 Signs You’re Renovating a Condemned Novel

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I’ve always loved looking at real estate. There’s just something about picturing yourself in different homes that opens your mind to the many different possibilities your future could hold. A few days ago, I was looking at a local house advertised on the internet. The photos were inside shots only, of what appeared to be

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Are These Filter Words Weakening Your Fiction?

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After taking several weeks away from the first draft of my novel, I decided to jump back in. I expected to find all sorts of problems with the story: inconsistencies in the plot, lack of transitions, poor characterization—the works. But what began to stick out at me the most was something to which I’d given

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Serial Comma Drama: Which Side Are You On?

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All through school, I was taught that when one writes a list, no comma is needed after the second last item. For example: Please get milk, eggs, butter, bread, sugar and salt from the grocery store. As far as I knew, a comma would have been unnecessary after the word sugar. Now, I’m not so

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Will Literary Agents Really Read Your Query Letter?

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I recently received an email from a concerned writer about a statement I’d made in one of my previous posts. This writer has allowed me to use the email for the purposes of this article. Here is an extract: I saw this on your blog and was disturbed by the implications to say the least:

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