The ability to write a blog post has become vital in this day and age. Everyone knows it’s no longer just a medium to express thoughts, updates or personal advice. Blogs now go further than that. They can be helpful step-by-step guides, and share important news. Not just that, they’ve become crucial to businesses on the rise.

Maintaining an active blog keeps businesses and their users close. That improves brand awareness and helps the readers connect to them. Blogs can also provide their own source of income. Many digital nomads depend on their blogs for a huge chunk of their monthly earnings. So it goes without saying that learning how to write a compelling blog post is important these days. That’s why we brought you these top nine tips to help make it happen.

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In 1979, the Choose Your Own Adventure gamebooks came to be, bringing with them a new and innovative approach to storytelling. Giving readers free rein to choose how the story goes has inspired a lot of books, games, and even movies since then. In fact, they’re accredited with their part in helping role-playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons. In a way, they also led to the evolution of interactive storytelling, even back then.

This method of storytelling has had a very dramatic impact on many things in our lives. It facilitated not just role-playing games, but other things like choosing how a story you’re reading goes and even how a movie ends. This idea of giving the observer options has far surpassed the idea of alternative endings and bonus materials on DVDs. Continue Reading

According to Wyzowl the average person’s attention span has gone from 12 seconds to 8.25 seconds in recent years. A huge part of that has to do with social media and its negative effects on us. We’ve become impatient, and with scrolling made really easy, losing interest has become a problem. The same goes for readers. Losing interest in a book they’re reading comes sooner than it used to, especially with the variety of books being published each year. That is why authors need to learn different ways to keep readers hooked. One of which is to learn how to write a hook.

A hook, or commonly known as a narrative hook, is the start of a story that grips the reader’s attention and keeps them from turning away. Sometimes it’s just the first sentence, other times it’s the entire first paragraph. It doesn’t necessarily have to be something grand. It can merely be something that keeps the reader wanting to know more. Continue Reading

Incorporating dialogue in your ebook is very important. Especially for avid storytellers. But many a writer struggles with how to format dialogue within their writing. That’s how they end up making some less than stellar mistakes. This, in turn, makes their writing seem amateurish, and that’s what we’re here to avoid.

Today we will teach you everything you need to know about writing and formatting your dialogue. We will go over grammatical points, punctuation errors, and basic tips to help your dialogue sound better. As per usual, there will be examples throughout the post to show you what it should be like. So, without further ado, let’s go on to how to format dialogue!

This is the third installment in the what is a dialogue and how to write it series. Continue Reading

Now that we’ve explained what a dialogue is, and its purpose, it’s time to discuss how to write dialogue in a book. See, writing the perfect dialogue is an art in itself. That doesn’t mean it’s impossible or exclusive to proficient writers, but it requires some craftiness on your part.

There are many who consider dialogues to be the easiest part of book writing, while others consider it the most difficult. But it all comes down to knowing how to come up with the perfect conversation between two or more people. That’s what we’re here today to explain, all the things you need to keep in mind when writing dialogue.

Keep in mind that this blog post is part two of our series on writing dialogue. You can head on to What is a Dialogue for part one.

So, how to write dialogue in a book then? Continue Reading

One truth we have to bring to light is that white authors have predominantly influenced the publishing industry. That doesn’t mean people of color haven’t been writing as much or working just as hard, it just means their work isn’t getting enough recognition out in the world. That’s why we’re here to put the spotlight on some black authors who more than deserve your attention.

The need to stray from the publishing industry norms has been around for years. Organizations such as We Need Diverse Books and People of Color Publishing have been fighting to make a change for quite some time. It’s merely now thanks to BLM (Black Lives Matter) and the current situation in the US that people are finally willing to listen. Challenges such as the #BlackoutBestsellerList have also gained traction worldwide, making it the time for us to finally expand our reading list to include some black authors.

So, without further ado, here are our top fifteen black authors whose books you need to check out as soon as possible. Continue Reading

Since the beginning of time, humans have relied on conversations to communicate with one another. Face-to-face conversations held a lot of advantages as people can sense the tone, see the gestures, and determine the expressions. None of those are easy to translate on paper. Creating dialogues in your story, with the help of speech tags, can bridge a little of that gap and help the reader imagine how the conversation would really go. But what is a dialogue?

With writing a book, dialogue plays a huge role in ensuring that your readers enjoy the experience. Dialogues add a sense of realism to your story and help your reader get a better grip on the scene and what is going on. Today we’re here to explain what a dialogue is and why it’s essential to your book.

This is part one of a new series on dialogue we’ll be starting here on our blog. Continue Reading

One thing to always keep in mind is that the writing process doesn’t just involve writing. There are three stages starting with prewriting then going on to the actual writing, followed by revising. Today we will tackle the most difficult stage of all three, finally putting pen to paper and getting some writing done. Getting to this part where the magic happens might trigger one of two reactions in you, complete excitement, or nerve-wracking anxiety. Or sometimes a mix of both.

Here’s the thing you need to remember though, writing an ebook is a big deal. Some have high expectations for it and are either impatient for it to pay out or feel trepidation over the possibility of them not getting what they want out of it. The trick for you to wade through both reactions is to calm down, follow the previously paved path with the outline, and dive into your ebook. Ignore all the expectations and write for the sake of your book and nothing else.

This is the second part of the writing process series. For the first part, head on to The Simple Guide to Prewriting Your Ebook.
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Out of the different editing techniques, copyediting is by far the most in-demand. That doesn’t mean it’s the most important of all the techniques, as each one serves a specific purpose. It means, however, that it’s one of the most difficult to deal with.

But what is copyediting? How is it different from line editing and proofreading? What do you need to do to become a copyeditor? And where can you hire professional copyeditors? That’s what we’re here to explain to you. Continue Reading

Writing isn’t the easiest thing to do when you’re not sure where to start. In fact, the whole thing can be a little overwhelming. Whether you’re writing a short story or trying to hit a specific word count, it can be a lot to take in. That is why we’ve brought you some writing strategies to help get your creative juices flowing.

While these strategies may not be the most well-known, they’re tried and have our seal of approval. Continue Reading