Dear Purposeful Prose,  I don’t know anything about building a story. When I see words like “pacing” or “character development”, especially in writing groups, I don’t know what to do. I’ve written for fun before, but I don’t understand mechanics at all. I feel like I’m too old to learn all this.  There’s a lot of jargon in writing that’s helpful to know. The good news is that the concepts behind those terms existed before the term did. We have “character development” because

Original ideas are difficult to come by, and some would argue that they’re impossible to find. There is some merit to the notion that all ideas are, in some form or fashion, derivative of something else. Because there is no such thing as a new idea, in the eyes of some, most plagiarism concerns boil down to the idea that if it isn’t verbatim, it doesn’t matter.  I once compiled a plagiarism report for a delightful children’s book. The report wasn’t very long. It was an origin

Are you looking for inspiration this October? Let us help! Use these prompts for creative writing exercises or to build on the...