The First Draft Pro Blog

We freaking love stories

You do too? Well, well, well. That smells like BFF potential.

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Writing Tips
3 min read

The ultimate guide to your first draft

Comprehensive strategies and considerations for crafting your initial manuscript.
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Writing Tips
3 min read

How to use the Kubler-Ross stages for managing change/grief in your story

Implementing the stages of grief to depict character development and conflict.
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Writing Tips
3 min read

6 approaches to finishing your first draft

Strategies for completing the initial version of your manuscript.
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Writing Tips
3 min read

How to write humour (a brief overview)

Techniques for incorporating humor into your narrative effectively.
An illustration of two characters in a romance novel.
Writing Tips
3 min read

How to write healthy relationships

Crafting authentic and positive interpersonal dynamics.
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Tropes
3 min read

A complete guide to book tropes – including a list of 20+ tropes you can use

Utilizing and subverting common narrative themes and devices effectively.
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Writing Tips
3 min read

Chekhov's gun

Understanding and implementing the principle of relevant narrative elements.
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Writing Tips
3 min read

The 2 ways you can introduce your inciting incident

Strategies for presenting the initiating event of your narrative.
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Writing Tips
3 min read

A foolproof formula for writing a inciting incidents

Crafting compelling events that set the narrative in motion.
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Writing Tips
3 min read

How to know what you can leave out/not dramatize

Identifying non-essential elements that can be omitted from the narrative.
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Writing Tips
3 min read

How to use internal monologues effectively

Crafting insightful and impactful internal reflections.
An illustration of an unreliable narrator with a very cool haircut and a cigarette, even though cigarettes are bad for you.
Writing Tips
3 min read

A short guide to the unreliable narrator

Understanding and implementing narrators with compromised reliability.