What's Cooking?

Every good story needs a nice (or not so nice) turn or two to keep it interesting. This week, writers get to release monsters in whatever forms they may take.

In this article from 1989, author Orson Scott Card shares his understanding of the four factors that are present in every story and how they determine the kind of story the writer is attempting to tell.

Debut novelist Jane Igharo shares her experience writing and publishing Ties That Tether, why some immigrants forbid their children to marry outside their ethnicity, and more!

Author Tim Waggoner explains how to avoid clichés and create an inventive horror plot in this excerpt from his book Writing in the Dark.

Every Wednesday, Robert Lee Brewer shares a prompt and an example poem to get things started on the Poetic Asides blog. This week, write an At Blank poem.

Author Heidi McCrary digs into when a memoir is a novel (or at least, when it should be a novel) and examines the thin line between fabricated fact and real fiction by looking at her own novel, Chasing North Star.

Dubbed the "Godfather behind creative nonfiction" by Vanity Fair Magazine, Lee Gutkind shares his first experience with memoir, what makes it different than his previous books, what writers can't take back, and more!

In honor of WD's 100th-anniversary year, this week's writing prompt will be a blast from the past.

Learn when you're writing or reading a homonym vs. homophone vs. homograph with Grammar Rules from the Writer's Digest editors, including a few examples of each.