Advice and Articles > Authors (Page 6 of 8)

What is Back Matter?

Just as front matter is what you find at the beginning of a book, back matter, simply put, is what you find at the end of a book—the sections that appear after the central story has been completed. These sections of back matter are often supplementary in nature, and often inform the reader about some aspect of the book.

How to Write a Preface and a Foreword

Are you thinking about writing a preface for your book or have you been asked to write a foreword? A preface is a brief introduction (link) written by the author, as opposed to a foreword, which is an introduction written by another person that usually comes before the preface.

Short Stories: Wondering How to Fit Your Big Ideas into a Small Space?

Scribendi.com's editors explain what a short story is and offer helpful tips about how to write a short story.

Query Letter Sample

We have already discussed how to write a query letter, and provided tips on what you should include in one and how you should format it. Now, we have provided a query letter sample to help make the letter writing process easier.

Book Review Examples

As discussed in our article explaining how to write a book review, book reviews are very different from book reports. In order to illustrate what a book review is, we have provided a book review example for your reference.

How to Reduce Wordiness

Do you find yourself writing sentences that are far too long? Have you ever re-read a sentence and struggled to finish it in one breath? If so, you may be suffering from something called prolixity, or in laymen’s terms, wordiness. Our editors suggest several ways to help you avoid wordiness and increase quality.

Tax Tips for Writers

What are the tax issues surrounding income earned from writing and what are some helpful tax tips? The answer, of course, is: It depends (on how much you make, where you live, etc.). This article contains a few tax tips to start you thinking about tax issues.

Mastering the Art of Script Writing

You’ve got a great story idea, and you just know it will be perfect for the big screen. But now what? Perhaps this is your first attempt at script writing, or perhaps you already have a screenplay or two under your belt—either way, we have a few tips that can help make script writing a little easier.

Script Frenzy: What Is It and How Do I Participate?

Script Frenzy is an event, an organization, a community, and most of all, a personal goal. If you’ve ever wanted to see your story on the stage, TV, silver screen, or even in the pages of a graphic novel or comic, now’s the time. Join the frenzy!

How to Write a Prologue

So, you’ve finished writing your book and can’t figure out where to put that extra bit of necessary information? This article will explain the prologue and help you determine whether you should use one.

How to Write a Synopsis

When assembling a query package, the synopsis is the lynchpin. However, the task of writing one can be quite overwhelming. Our editors ease this process by outlining how to write a synopsis.

The Top 10 Ways to Beat Writer’s Block

As the fabled nemesis of authors for centuries, writer’s block is perhaps the most frustrating thing about being an author. That seemingly impenetrable barrier that, for whatever reason, arises in the mind of an author from time to time can be of overwhelming annoyance, but have no fear, the editors at Scribendi.com are here to help.

Prewriting: Having Trouble Putting Words on the Page?

What is prewriting, you ask? It is simply the first stage of writing and generally includes planning, mapping, research, outlining, storyboarding, and so on. Basically, prewriting is everything that happens before you start “putting words on the page."

Front Matter: What it is and Why it is Important

All the material that appears at the front of a book before the actual content is called front matter, and it actually contains some very important information!

How to Write a Book Proposal

How does one go about writing a book proposal? Well, like all of the answers to life’s big questions, this one can be found in the lyrics of The Beatles.

Interjections: A Guide to Using Interjections Effectively

Creating realistic, natural sounding dialogue in writing can be a difficult task for writers. Dialogue may come off as rigid and artificial sounding. Whether an author is writing fiction or nonfiction, they are almost always tasked with creating some form of dialogue. After editing thousands of books, the editors at Scribendi.com believe that the most useful tool to creating an air of humanism in a character’s dialogue is the interjection.

How to Write a Character Sketch

The editors at Scribendi outline the key components involved in writing a character sketch.

How to Write a Book Review

Writing a book review is not the same as writing a book report or a summary. A book review is a critical analysis of a published work that assesses the work's strengths and weaknesses. Many authors strive to have their books reviewed by a professional because a published review (even a negative one) can be a great source of publicity.

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