Writer's Digest

William smiled at his wife, but it was a manufactured smile, the kind he’d worn when she first met him, many years earlier. He’d gone back to needing levers and pulleys to make his face do what he wanted it to do. She could feel him thinking: Make Sy

The summer before my first year of high school, my family took a vacation with my best friend’s family. Somehow, we’d gotten a brochure for a lovely looking resort on an idyllic lake in Wisconsin. It seemed straight out of Dirty Dancing (minus the di

JORJEANA MARIE (JorjeanaMarie.com) is the Los Angeles Times bestselling author of Improv for Writers: 10 Secrets to Help Novelists and Screenwriters Bypass Writer’s Block and Generate Infinite Ideas (PRH/Ten Speed Press) and a staff writer on the Emm

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Amy Jones SENIOR EDITOR Robert Lee Brewer MANAGING EDITOR Moriah Richard EDITORS Sadie Dean Michael Woodson ART DIRECTOR Wendy Dunning EDITORS-AT-LARGE Tyler Moss Jessica Strawser CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Jane K. Cleland, Bob Eckstein, Ja

We wear the mask that grins and lies, It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,— This debt we pay to human guile; With torn and bleeding hearts we smile, And mouth with myriad subtleties. So begins Paul Laurence Dunbar’s classic poem “We Wear the Mask

A comprehensive book marketing plan includes multiple channels to reach readers where they are. An author website catches people via search engines; social media and advertising can drive anything from awareness to purchase; and influencer collaborat

Man on Top, The Real Food Reset, The Author Brain (forthcoming) (Health, wellness, nutrition, and authorship; Fit Ink Publications) WHY SELF-PUBLISH? My first book, Man on Top, was a fitness book for overweight men who didn’t love fitness. Publishers

It is advice as old as time: If you want to make a good first impression, open with a joke. Public speakers, job interview coaches, and your Uncle Jack will all tell you that nothing succeeds like getting a laugh. But does that same wisdom hold true

Saffron Dodd (she/her) says she has always loved reading books for children and young adults. She has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Brighton and a master’s degree in children’s literature, with distinction, from Goldsmiths,

They say smiling is good for you, that it triggers powerful endorphins that boost mood and reduce stress, much in the way a good rom-com novel does when you’re in need of a hopeful, hilarious, guaranteed happily-everafter. I know I’m hard-pressed not

Last issue we discussed the challenges of developing article ideas, finding appropriate markets to query, building a professional portfolio, and the value of multiples in freelance success. This issue we’re going to pull it all together as we explore

Liza Dawson Associates | Pittsburgh, Pa. GENRES: Adult fiction (women’s fiction/upmarket/book club, suspense/thrillers, rom-coms), contemporary young adult, select nonfiction (health/wellness, parenting, sports, cultural criticism/social justice, fem

I often consider November and December reflective months—a time of year to think about what’s passed, often with an eye on how to move forward. For freelance writers, there’s a great market open year-round that focuses on the past: history magazines.

Writing humor as a genre—a satiric story or novel, a laugh-outloud memoir or essay—is a broad topic, deserving exploration beyond the bounds of this column. But what if you’re writing serious, sorrowful, or scary fiction or nonfiction? A personal ess

If I learned one thing as a young writer, it was that kids can read a book as long as it uses short words. It’s what I was taught by more seasoned editors and what I have applied to the hundreds of early reader books I’ve written and edited over the

Since this is the issue all about making readers laugh, I chose two books I expected would do just that—make me laugh. And make no mistake about it, they did, frequently and loudly. But what I wasn’t expecting was the depth of the emotional connectio

Fill in the blanks with the listed part of speech, then transfer your answers to the stories below to see how you “improve” the original. 1. Adjective  2. Adjective 3. Noun 4. Adjective 5. Past-Tense Verb 1. Adjective 2. Adjective 3. Noun 4. Noun 5.