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Blog • Perfecting your Craft

Last updated on Feb 07, 2023

The 50+ Best Writing Websites of 2024

The Internet is full of writing websites and blogs to help people reach their creative goals . If you’ve always dreamt of writing your own book, but don’t know how to get there — or if you’re in the process of writing, but feel unsure about what to do next — then it’s your lucky day! Here we have all the best writing websites of 2024 in one single place for your convenience. They’re also organized by category, and alphabetically within each of those categories, to make each one easier to find. Enjoy!

Best writing websites for writing craft and inspiration

1. Almost an Author

Offering up new content every day, Almost an Author covers a grand scope of writing topics. From genre-specific advice to emotional support on your writing journey, there's tons of useful info here for beginner and veteran writers alike.

2. Association of Writer & Writing Programs

Having just marked their 50th anniversary, AWP is one of the premier authorities on writing. The AWP website provides resources and ample opportunities for authors, teachers, and students at every point in their career. Here you’ll be able to find information about writing programs, career options, and conferences all over the world. Keep in mind, though, that access to some of these features is restricted to members only.

3. Creativity Portal

This is a wonderful hub for creative resources that has been around for a whopping nineteen years! Here you can find writing prompts , creative coaching, printable writing templates, and interviews with authors that will help nourish the right side of your brain.

4. Daily Writing Tips

As the name suggests, this site offers daily writing tips ranging from open-ended prompts and exercises to grammar, spelling, punctuation, and vocabulary. It also covers all writing levels and professions, so it doesn't matter how far along you are in your writing career — DWT is sure to help you out.

Instead of spending thousands of dollars on a master’s degree, you can get your own "DIY MFA" right here! This site (founded by Gabriela Pereira ) aims to cover everything you would learn in a graduate program, while giving you the freedom to choose your own areas of concentration and allocate your time as you please.

6. Electric Literature

While not exactly a craft-focused website — so no straight-up writing advice or prompts — this nonprofit digital publisher showcases literature-related essays, criticism, and recommended readings. If you're looking to brush up on both literary theory and recent literary trends, Electric Lit is the place for you.

7. Fiction University

This virtual university, run by award-winning author Janice Hardy, contains tons of advice and concrete examples to help authors build a strong writing foundation. It's full of blog posts by professionals who share their own processes and techniques, providing tips not just on what you should do as a writer, but on how to make it happen.

8. Helping Writers Become Authors

Longtime author K.M. Weiland offers writing advice that ranges from outlining and structuring to characterization and dialogue — plus all the little details in between. She updates her blog faithfully with topical posts that would pique any writer's (or non-writer's) interest.

9. Insecure Writer's Support Group

Writing is intimidating for everyone , whether you're a multi-published author or you're just starting out. That's why getting support, guidance, and motivation throughout the process is vital! On IWSG, you'll discover a wealth of information on writing, publishing, marketing, and anything else you might need to ultimately overcome your insecurities.

10. Literary Hub

LitHub boasts a superb selection of content for all things literary. Here you can get all the latest book-related news, posts on design and the craft, your daily dose of fiction, and sparkling reviews of new works. One of this site's best features is its section on literature in translation — a great resource for those who want to read books and authors from around the world.

11. LitReactor

The LitReactor blog consists of writing classes, workshops, and a myriad of posts on writing and books ( some of which are even written by us! ). There’s also an online magazine that includes interviews, criticism and analysis, and seasonally appropriate reads and recommendations.

12. LitRejections

An unfortunate occupational hazard of with writing is rejection. This is where a site like LitRejections comes into play! It offers personal stories to help discouraged writers persevere through rejection, and maintain hope and motivation as they move forward in their careers.

13. Live Write Thrive

In this website by professional writer and editor C.S. Lakin, you’ll find plenty of nuanced writing anecdotes and tips. Lakin also supplies annotated critiques that can help you prep your book for publication.

14. NaNoWriMo

Besides serving as the official information hub for NaNoWriMo , this site also lends constant support for those struggling to "win" National Novel Writing Month. Make sure to check out the NaNoWriMo forums, which are chock-full of other people's personal writing tips and strategies to get you through November — and every other month of the year — as a writer.

15. Now Novel

This comprehensive website, founded by author Bridget McNulty , is a go-to for just about every writing-related question you might have. Here you'll also find advice, courses, and even an author dashboard where you can keep track of your own writing progress.

16. Positive Writer

If you often feel uncertain about your creative abilities, this is the site for you. Bryan Hutchinson created Positive Writer to encourage and inspire all those who want to write, no matter how much experience or confidence they have.

17. ProWritingAid

ProWritingAid offers a fantastic manuscript editing software that analyzes your writing and creates reports for you to learn from! This tool also includes a thesaurus, grammar checks, style suggestions, and more — you can learn all about it on the ProWritingAid blog, or in our review of the app !

18. She Writes

A well-established writing website with a feminist bent, She Writes is "the largest online community and content site for women writers... all around the world." The site features thoughtful posts and resources to help writers on their journeys, as well as a personal She Writes blog page for every user who signs up.

19. Well-Storied

Here you can find recent articles, workbooks, tutorials, and fascinating discussions on writing. Kristine Kieffer has an extensive archive of posts as well, where you can procure information on just about any topic related to books and writing.

20. The Write Practice

Fulfilling the promise of their name, every single post on this site emphasizes putting theory into practice! There's simply no better way to become a writer than by creating a routine, and that’s exactly what The Write Practice helps facilitate.

21. Writer’s Digest

Writer's Digest is one of the most encyclopedic writing websites out there — after all, the print magazine has been around for almost a century now! Here you’ll find genre and vocation-organized articles, events and competitions, webinars, templates, tutorials, and so much more.

22. Writer Unboxed

Writer Unboxed features articles by authors and industry professionals, focused specifically on the craft and business of fiction writing.

23. The Writing Cooperative

Plain and simple, this is a group of people who want to help each other become better writers. On Writing Cooperative, you will find articles that cover just about every aspect of the writing life. They also have monthly writing challenges to keep you incentivized, and there’s even a space where you can submit your own article to the blog!

24. Writing.com

This is an absolutely all-inclusive community for writers . It’s open to all levels and provides a creative, supportive environment for all members, as well as portfolios to store and display their writing. Like most writing websites, it also includes a plethora of writing tools , contests, and rewards.

25. Catapult: Don’t Write Alone

Don’t Write Alone is a blog written by the Catapult team dedicated to helping writers grow their skills. As a publisher and magazine founded in 2005, Catapult has seen a lot of works and now they’re spilling all the details. From interviews, to craft essays, to writer lifestyle essays, Catapult covers it all.

26. Kirkus Review’s Writers’ Center

Kirkus Review is known for its prestigious $50,000 dollar annual prize and its bi-monthly issues where they critique hundreds of recently published books. But, did you know they also have a section of their website devoted to helping emerging writers grow their skills and navigate the publishing industry? They’re always up to date on the latest trends — if they aren’t creating new trends themselves.

27. Writers Write

An invaluable resource for creative writers, business writers, or bloggers, Writers Write offers over 1400 articles, courses, and workbooks to help you take your writing practice to the next level. Alongside their educational content, they offer book reviews, trivia on famous authors, and prompts. Sign up for their inspirational newsletters for regular hits of motivation that will keep you writing.

28. The Narrative Arc

Beginning as a home to Andie R. Cranford’s writing journey, The Narrative Arc is now a treasure trove of practical tips and prompts to inspire your creativity. Breakdowns of popular books are particularly handy for the budding author — but whether exploring writing for the first time or tightening the bolts on your Franken-novel, the site's ideas on craft are elegant and inspiring.

Best writing websites in the publishing industry

29. Agent Query

This database allows authors to perform in-depth searches for literary agents . You can narrow your search by genre and keywords, view agents’ full profiles, and see if they are currently accepting queries — all for free!

30. The Creative Penn

Besides being a bestselling author on various topics, Joanna Penn is also a leading voice in self-publishing . On her punnily named site, you’ll find abundant information related to writing, self-publishing, marketing, and everything else you mind need to make a living as a writer.

31. Digital Pubbing

Digital Pubbing provides industry news, interviews with indie authors, and resources for learning all about ebooks and the publishing industry. In accordance with the name, this is the perfect site for any author hoping to absorb some serious digital knowledge.

32. The Independent Publishing Magazine

We know it might seem like we're repeating ourselves, but this website really is all about publishing (both independent and traditional, despite what the name indicates). Whatever info you need about self-publishing, trad pub, or hybrid publishing , you’ll definitely be able to find it here.

33. Publishers Weekly

And if you have a specific question about the publishing world, you’ll most likely find the answer here. This weekly magazine is packed full of news, reviews, announcements, and many other resources on the industry. It has been dubbed as "the Bible of the book business" and with its extensive archive, it’s easy to see why.

34. Publishing Perspectives

Publishing Perspectives is another leading source of publishing info, specializing in industry news and topical articles. Aimed at publishers, agents , and authors alike, it features a variety of posts that cover book fairs, distribution, education, and much more.

35. Query Shark

Not sure where your query letter is up to snuff? Query Shark offers the opportunity to have your query critiqued, and to read detailed query critiques of other authors' letters, so you can get the best possible results for your book. Be warned, though, that this sharp-toothed feedback isn't for the weak of heart.

36. Writer Beware

This amazingly thorough site compiles information on schemes and scams that affect authors , especially those run through email and the Internet. It’s sponsored by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, but obviously applies to authors everywhere. If you're a fresh-faced author trying to get published, definitely check it out — it could save you from losing thousands of dollars in an elaborate scam.

37. The Darling Axe

When the industry professionals at The Darling Axe aren’t working on manuscripts, they flock to the internet to share their hot takes on the publishing industry. They also host writing contests throughout the year to build a writing community and give unpublished authors the chance to get feedback from professionals.

Best writing websites for marketing and design

38. David Gaughran

An experienced author of historical adventures, short stories, and popular books for writers , David Gaughran is one of the definitive writing experts out there. His eponymous blog contains plenty of info on marketing and self-publishing, plus workshops to help aspiring authors. And similar to Writer Beware, he's the noble opposition of online publishing scams and scammers — so if you're frustrated by these issues, you'll discover a blissfully sympathetic voice on his blog.

39. Kikolani

Focused specifically on marketing, Kikolani offers tips and strategies for bloggers who want to grow their presence and attract more readers. Here you’ll find information on brand development , social media, customer retention, and other useful tips that you can put to good use as a blogger. (If you're just getting started, though, we'd recommend this course .)

40. Kindlepreneur

Dave Chesson is — in his own words — a “digital marketing nut.” His blog has all the information you could ever need about Kindle book publishing , how to write to market, increasing your rankings on Amazon, and lots more practical tips and advice.

41. Storiad

Storiad is a marketing platform that helps authors and publishers sell books. Go here for essential information on writing apps , databases, tools, and budgeting to help you run your own publishing campaign from start to finish.

42. Writers & Artists

Part of the distinguished Bloomsbury, Writers & Artists has quite a few articles on writing and the self-publishing process. They also offer editorial services and events on many different topics, like genre-specific writing courses and how to get connected with agents .

43. Your Writer Platform

Naturally, this site is dedicated to building your very own writer platform. There are tons of tips, resources, tools, how-tos, and even individual consulting services to help you build the platform that works best for you and your marketing needs.

Best writing blogs by industry professionals

44. Goins, Writer

Bestselling author Jeff Goins created this blog to share his thoughts on writing and to inspire others to chase their creative dreams. He's especially good at breaking complex topics down into digestible bits — new writers, go here for your primers.

45. Jane Friedman

With copious experience in the publishing industry, Jane Friedman offers online classes and articles on the entire process of book publishing. She's a real goldmine of business knowledge, so keep her in mind for when you're ready to publish your book.

46. Nail Your Novel

As a bestselling former ghostwriter who now publishes under her own name, Roz Morris provides advice about writing, self-publishing, and of course, ghostwriting . If you're interested in becoming a ghostwriter, be sure to check out her courses!

47. Nathan Bransford

Nathan Bransford is a former literary agent who posts all about the inner workings of publishing, as well and information on agents and self-publishing. He also does consultations, edits, and critiques .

48. Rachelle Gardner

Skillful agent Rachelle Gardner has negotiated over 200 contracts with over twenty publishers and helped more than 100 authors fulfill their dreams of publishing. On her blog, she offers writing, publishing, and social media coaching, along with general writing and publishing tips.

49. Kris Writes

For regular insights from a New York Times bestselling author, look no further than Kristine Kathryn Rusch's blog. On Mondays, she posts free short stories for authors to find inspiration in, and Wednesdays she posts in her “Business Musings” collection where she breaks down news from the publishing industry and offers her inside opinions.

50. The Marginalian

Maria Popova describes her site as “a record of my own becoming as a person — intellectually, creatively, spiritually, poetically — drawn from my extended marginalia on the search for meaning across literature, science, art, philosophy, and the various other tendrils of human thought and feeling.” She sends out a Sunday newsletter with thoughtful deconstruction of the week’s best liberal arts goings-on to help broaden her readers’ appreciation of the creative world.

51. John August

For all the screenwriters out there, John August co-hosts a weekly podcast with fellow screenwriter Craig Mazin discussing both the craft and business of screenwriting while breaking down popular movies. To help screenwriters really get a feel for the process of working with a studio, John has posted multiple versions of scripts from different stages in the production process on films and series he’s written, including Charlie and the Chocolate Factory , Big Fish , and Chernobyl .

What are some of your favorite writing websites? Let us know in the comments below!

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The 17 Best Writing Websites to Become a Better Writer

In the competitive world of writing, no one is perfect. Even the best of the best can make improvements to their craft. No matter how accurate you think you are, there are always things to learn.

This can be done in a few ways, with writing websites being one. These websites exist with the sole purpose of helping writers of all levels and types.

Writing websites can provide many things to a writer looking to improve themselves:

Tips to strengthen your stories.
Tighten up your publishing knowledge and skills.
Empower writers to work hard and do a good job.
Improve your methods of writing and storytelling.
Provide daily motivation, inspiration, and general advice.

These are resourceful places to get all the information we might need as writers. The owners of these websites are, usually, genuine people who want to help growing writers become the best they can be.

Writing websites are a comfort zone for writers. You can go to them in times of distress, writer’s block, or uncertainty around your plotting. You will be able to find resources to help you know how to write a novel or a helpful nonfiction book.

Benefits of Using Writing Websites

Writing websites give specific pieces of writing advice to all writers – established and aspiring.
Writers get the ultimate guidelines from successful authors, whether they are looking for help writing or publishing.
These sites offer literary techniques to help writers reach their full potential in their writing endeavors.
Writers will learn how to correct mistakes and create credible work.
Writing websites will provide resources, exercises, and things you can do to improve your writing skills.
They offer writers free courses on a variety of subjects, so you are sure to learn a lot.
Writing websites help writers learn how to market themselves and their work. This can help them get both published and hired.
All the learning, whether from people or courses, is (mostly) free.
Writing prompts are posted daily on some writing sites which can be useful for many writers struggling to find inspiration.
Writing sites help a writer to keep on writing; it can give writers a boost and a push when they are feeling down and unmotivated.

Classification of Writing Websites

There are numerous writing websites online and of course, they all offer something a little different. You will need to look around a little to find what you are looking for, specifically.

Writing websites are generally classified into five categories, depending on the content.

[table id=7 /]

The 1 7 Best Writing Websites

There are so many helpful writing websites online. They all help writers learn different things. Listed below are some of the best ones.

The guides, tools, and advice on these writing websites are fantastic when used in conjunction with quality writing software. A good example of this is Squibler.

Squibler helps a writer do the actual writing. Organization, research, development, settings – it can help you put into practice everything you learn from these resources.

Daily Writing Tips

This writing website helps writers improve their grammar construction and word usage. The site gives writing tutorials and advice to writers.

The tips provided here are free, but if you want to gain some additional features, a $5 monthly price can be paid to get premium access. This includes comprehensive courses to help you improve your writing.

Janice Hardy’s Fiction University

This website will help a writer that has a rigorous weekly schedule. You will be able to develop the discipline that can help you get through the week without giving up on your writing halfway through.

This blog publishes articles about writing, with a focus on novels. There are many areas in which you can find advice:

Planning your novel
Writing your novel
Common writing problems
Editing your novel
Selling your novel
The general life of a writer

With over 2500 articles published, there is a lot of good information here. In addition to their own articles, they also offer a comprehensive list of other resources. Some of these include:

Other writing sites
Agents and querying resources
Writer’s conferences
Editing and writing services
Publishing-themed websites
Communities
Critique sites
Writing blogs
Book review blogs

The website is run by Janice Hardy, a writing teacher who is passionate about helping everyone learn to write. She offers her own expertise as well as plenty of posts and articles from guests who offer a different perspective.

Helping Writers Become Authors

This writing website is run by K.M Weiland, who has written a number of books – both fiction and nonfiction. She strives to help writers make the transition to authors.

She has many articles about the most basic elements of writing a novel. These include:

Story structure
Character arcs

She has published several books that are also written to help writers become authors. These books are an extension of the information found on the blog.

She offers a couple of freebies to start, with the rest being available for purchase on her website.

Kristen Lamb

Best-selling author Kristen Lamb runs a blog that offers tips, advice, and help for writers. She has a fun and casual demeanor that is welcoming for readers.

Her posts are relatable and easy to understand.

She also offers a number of courses where she will teach on different aspects of writing. Some of these are downloadable courses while others are live classes.

At its core, Reedsy wants to create beautiful books. They do this by giving authors and publishers access to quality professionals, useful tools, and educational content.

If you are looking for a professional to help you make your book better, Reedsy offers a diverse team including:

Ghostwriters
Web designers

In addition to this they also offer a free writing tool that helps you with the actual process of writing your book. The software provides a space to create and organize your different sections and elements – such as characters, research, etc.

You can use the software yourself, but it also has a fantastic collaboration feature. With this, you can seamlessly write with others. This is especially useful for new writers who are still learning how to write a book .

Lastly, Reedsy offers a large database of writing prompts to get you started.

You can pick from a list of different genres, and get some specific ideas start writing about. You can use these to begin your next big novel, or to do some practice.

Write to Done

Write to Done is a writing website that covers many different areas of writing. They have sections for:

Freelancing
Copywriting

They have articles from several different writers who all have different perspectives and opinions to offer.

Writers in the Storm

This is a unique writing blog that focuses on inspiration and motivation. If you are in a metaphorical writing “storm” this is a good place to go before deciding to give up.

The blog is run by a few different writers who all come from separate genres. This offers a wide range of perspective.

They also have some articles and information on improving your writing craft itself.

The Book Designer

This site is one that focuses more on the physical book itself and the publishing process.

It is run by Joel Friedlander who uses his own extensive experience to create articles on design and self-publishing. His wealth of information has already helped thousands of writers.

Jerry Jenkins

Jerry Jenkins is a 21-time New York Times best-selling author who is revealing his secrets.

One thing he offers on his site is an extremely helpful free guide: How to Become an Author: Your Complete Guide.

Once you’ve downloaded this, you can join his network of thousands of other writers and sign up for his newsletter which sends writing advice right to your inbox.

He also offers a list of writing tools to help you learn how to write a book. These are tools that assist with editing, organization, and distraction. These are programs that he endorses personally, so you can be sure they offer a quality service.

Lastly, his blog covers pretty much everything you need to know to learn how to write a novel or nonfiction book . From ideas, to characters, to plot, you can find advice right from the mouth of a seasoned writer.

Writers Helping Writers

This writing website does exactly what it says – it has writers helping other writings. They offer coaching services in addition to their articles on writing and publishing.

They also have a series of writing tools available for download. These are designed to help writers in a few different areas:

Character arc progression
Setting planner
Character profile questionnaire
And many more

The website is run by two women: Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi. n addition to running the site, they have co-authored a series of books to help writers.

The books are all part of the “thesaurus” series. It includes titles such as The Emotion Thesaurus and the Positive Trait Thesaurus.

Language is a Virus

Here you will find some articles on the writing craft. However, this is not their focus. This website contains several tools to help you either get started or keep going in your writing.

Their home page itself has a writing prompt right on it, with the option to generate another if you don’t like it.

They have a series of writing games, exercises, and generators to help you get inspired and motivated.

This is a fantastic resource for writers who may be feeling stuck or defeated.

Story a Day

Story a Day is an initiative that hopes to inspire creativity. They run two month-long challenges each year – one in May and one in September. The challenge is to write a short story every day.

This alone can be inspiring for writers, but they offer many extras:

Accountability group. On the first of each month you can publicly post your commitments for the coming month.
Weekly writing lessons and prompts.
A blog with regular posts on writing and creativity.
Twice-monthly podcasts with writing prompts and pep talks.

This writing website provides a community based challenge. this not only stimulates a writer’s imagination, but it does so with the support and accountability that others can provide.

The Intern Archives

While no longer an active blog, this archive can be extremely helpful to those embarking on a publishing journey. “The intern” also known as Hillary Smith, worked as an intern for several years.

In these archives, she shares insider information about the publishing industry that she thinks will be helpful to new and aspiring authors.

Positive Writer

This site was created to help writers stay positive. The blog contains posts on many positivity themed categories:

Writer’s doubt
Positive thinking
Goal setting

In addition to these inspiring and motivational articles you can also find information on writing, blogging, and publishing

Writer’s Digest

This site is for writers who want to be successful. The website is vast and extensive, but a few of the key features include:

Writing Prompts
Competitions
Online writing workshops

From poetry, fiction, and nonfiction,you can find advice, tips, and resources to help you. The workshops and communities available will only serve to enhance your ability by connecting you to others.

Poets & Writers

Poets and Writers is a non-profit that looks to serve creative writers of all kinds. In addition to their helpful and informative website they offer a number of other services:

A magazine.
Financial support for readings and other events.
sponsorship of writing prizes and awards.

The website offers articles on writing itself, as well as publishing, agents, awards, and writing news.

Writer Beware

Everyone appreciates getting help with their writing and publishing efforts. There are many people out there telling writers what they should do, or at least consider doing.

Authors everywhere choose some programs or websites to endorse, and they send their readers on their way. Writer Beware has taken it upon themselves to warn writers and authors of scams, schemes, and fraud they should be avoiding in the writing world.

Founded in 1998, they have been around long enough to see a lot of shady things go down. They know what they’re talking about.

Especially if you are close to publishing, take a look around this website. Make sure you don’t fall victim. This would make your experience learning how to write a book more negative, where you should only be doing positive things to move forward.

Improve Your Craft with These Writing Websites

This collection of writing websites should be enough to get you going. With a combination of advice, tips, insight, prompts, inspiration, and tools, you have more than enough to start learning how to write a novel or book of any kind.

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Knowledge Base

The Beginner's Guide to Writing an Essay | Steps & Examples

An academic essay is a focused piece of writing that develops an idea or argument using evidence, analysis, and interpretation.

There are many types of essays you might write as a student. The content and length of an essay depends on your level, subject of study, and course requirements. However, most essays at university level are argumentative — they aim to persuade the reader of a particular position or perspective on a topic.

The essay writing process consists of three main stages:

Preparation: Decide on your topic, do your research, and create an essay outline.
Writing : Set out your argument in the introduction, develop it with evidence in the main body, and wrap it up with a conclusion.
Revision: Check your essay on the content, organization, grammar, spelling, and formatting of your essay.

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Essay writing process, preparation for writing an essay, writing the introduction, writing the main body, writing the conclusion, essay checklist, lecture slides, frequently asked questions about writing an essay.

The writing process of preparation, writing, and revisions applies to every essay or paper, but the time and effort spent on each stage depends on the type of essay .

For example, if you’ve been assigned a five-paragraph expository essay for a high school class, you’ll probably spend the most time on the writing stage; for a college-level argumentative essay , on the other hand, you’ll need to spend more time researching your topic and developing an original argument before you start writing.

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Before you start writing, you should make sure you have a clear idea of what you want to say and how you’re going to say it. There are a few key steps you can follow to make sure you’re prepared:

Understand your assignment: What is the goal of this essay? What is the length and deadline of the assignment? Is there anything you need to clarify with your teacher or professor?
Define a topic: If you’re allowed to choose your own topic , try to pick something that you already know a bit about and that will hold your interest.
Do your research: Read primary and secondary sources and take notes to help you work out your position and angle on the topic. You’ll use these as evidence for your points.
Come up with a thesis: The thesis is the central point or argument that you want to make. A clear thesis is essential for a focused essay—you should keep referring back to it as you write.
Create an outline: Map out the rough structure of your essay in an outline . This makes it easier to start writing and keeps you on track as you go.

Once you’ve got a clear idea of what you want to discuss, in what order, and what evidence you’ll use, you’re ready to start writing.

The introduction sets the tone for your essay. It should grab the reader’s interest and inform them of what to expect. The introduction generally comprises 10–20% of the text.

1. Hook your reader

The first sentence of the introduction should pique your reader’s interest and curiosity. This sentence is sometimes called the hook. It might be an intriguing question, a surprising fact, or a bold statement emphasizing the relevance of the topic.

Let’s say we’re writing an essay about the development of Braille (the raised-dot reading and writing system used by visually impaired people). Our hook can make a strong statement about the topic:

The invention of Braille was a major turning point in the history of disability.

2. Provide background on your topic

Next, it’s important to give context that will help your reader understand your argument. This might involve providing background information, giving an overview of important academic work or debates on the topic, and explaining difficult terms. Don’t provide too much detail in the introduction—you can elaborate in the body of your essay.

3. Present the thesis statement

Next, you should formulate your thesis statement— the central argument you’re going to make. The thesis statement provides focus and signals your position on the topic. It is usually one or two sentences long. The thesis statement for our essay on Braille could look like this:

As the first writing system designed for blind people’s needs, Braille was a groundbreaking new accessibility tool. It not only provided practical benefits, but also helped change the cultural status of blindness.

4. Map the structure

In longer essays, you can end the introduction by briefly describing what will be covered in each part of the essay. This guides the reader through your structure and gives a preview of how your argument will develop.

The invention of Braille marked a major turning point in the history of disability. The writing system of raised dots used by blind and visually impaired people was developed by Louis Braille in nineteenth-century France. In a society that did not value disabled people in general, blindness was particularly stigmatized, and lack of access to reading and writing was a significant barrier to social participation. The idea of tactile reading was not entirely new, but existing methods based on sighted systems were difficult to learn and use. As the first writing system designed for blind people’s needs, Braille was a groundbreaking new accessibility tool. It not only provided practical benefits, but also helped change the cultural status of blindness. This essay begins by discussing the situation of blind people in nineteenth-century Europe. It then describes the invention of Braille and the gradual process of its acceptance within blind education. Subsequently, it explores the wide-ranging effects of this invention on blind people’s social and cultural lives.

Write your essay introduction

The body of your essay is where you make arguments supporting your thesis, provide evidence, and develop your ideas. Its purpose is to present, interpret, and analyze the information and sources you have gathered to support your argument.

Length of the body text

The length of the body depends on the type of essay. On average, the body comprises 60–80% of your essay. For a high school essay, this could be just three paragraphs, but for a graduate school essay of 6,000 words, the body could take up 8–10 pages.

Paragraph structure

To give your essay a clear structure , it is important to organize it into paragraphs . Each paragraph should be centered around one main point or idea.

That idea is introduced in a topic sentence . The topic sentence should generally lead on from the previous paragraph and introduce the point to be made in this paragraph. Transition words can be used to create clear connections between sentences.

After the topic sentence, present evidence such as data, examples, or quotes from relevant sources. Be sure to interpret and explain the evidence, and show how it helps develop your overall argument.

Lack of access to reading and writing put blind people at a serious disadvantage in nineteenth-century society. Text was one of the primary methods through which people engaged with culture, communicated with others, and accessed information; without a well-developed reading system that did not rely on sight, blind people were excluded from social participation (Weygand, 2009). While disabled people in general suffered from discrimination, blindness was widely viewed as the worst disability, and it was commonly believed that blind people were incapable of pursuing a profession or improving themselves through culture (Weygand, 2009). This demonstrates the importance of reading and writing to social status at the time: without access to text, it was considered impossible to fully participate in society. Blind people were excluded from the sighted world, but also entirely dependent on sighted people for information and education.

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The conclusion is the final paragraph of an essay. It should generally take up no more than 10–15% of the text . A strong essay conclusion :

Returns to your thesis
Ties together your main points
Shows why your argument matters

A great conclusion should finish with a memorable or impactful sentence that leaves the reader with a strong final impression.

What not to include in a conclusion

To make your essay’s conclusion as strong as possible, there are a few things you should avoid. The most common mistakes are:

Including new arguments or evidence
Undermining your arguments (e.g. “This is just one approach of many”)
Using concluding phrases like “To sum up…” or “In conclusion…”

Braille paved the way for dramatic cultural changes in the way blind people were treated and the opportunities available to them. Louis Braille’s innovation was to reimagine existing reading systems from a blind perspective, and the success of this invention required sighted teachers to adapt to their students’ reality instead of the other way around. In this sense, Braille helped drive broader social changes in the status of blindness. New accessibility tools provide practical advantages to those who need them, but they can also change the perspectives and attitudes of those who do not.

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Checklist: Essay

My essay follows the requirements of the assignment (topic and length ).

My introduction sparks the reader’s interest and provides any necessary background information on the topic.

My introduction contains a thesis statement that states the focus and position of the essay.

I use paragraphs to structure the essay.

I use topic sentences to introduce each paragraph.

Each paragraph has a single focus and a clear connection to the thesis statement.

I make clear transitions between paragraphs and ideas.

My conclusion doesn’t just repeat my points, but draws connections between arguments.

I don’t introduce new arguments or evidence in the conclusion.

I have given an in-text citation for every quote or piece of information I got from another source.

I have included a reference page at the end of my essay, listing full details of all my sources.

My citations and references are correctly formatted according to the required citation style .

My essay has an interesting and informative title.

I have followed all formatting guidelines (e.g. font, page numbers, line spacing).

Your essay meets all the most important requirements. Our editors can give it a final check to help you submit with confidence.

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An essay is a focused piece of writing that explains, argues, describes, or narrates.

In high school, you may have to write many different types of essays to develop your writing skills.

Academic essays at college level are usually argumentative : you develop a clear thesis about your topic and make a case for your position using evidence, analysis and interpretation.

The structure of an essay is divided into an introduction that presents your topic and thesis statement , a body containing your in-depth analysis and arguments, and a conclusion wrapping up your ideas.

The structure of the body is flexible, but you should always spend some time thinking about how you can organize your essay to best serve your ideas.

Your essay introduction should include three main things, in this order:

An opening hook to catch the reader’s attention.
Relevant background information that the reader needs to know.
A thesis statement that presents your main point or argument.

The length of each part depends on the length and complexity of your essay .

A thesis statement is a sentence that sums up the central point of your paper or essay . Everything else you write should relate to this key idea.

The thesis statement is essential in any academic essay or research paper for two main reasons:

It gives your writing direction and focus.
It gives the reader a concise summary of your main point.

Without a clear thesis statement, an essay can end up rambling and unfocused, leaving your reader unsure of exactly what you want to say.

A topic sentence is a sentence that expresses the main point of a paragraph . Everything else in the paragraph should relate to the topic sentence.

At college level, you must properly cite your sources in all essays , research papers , and other academic texts (except exams and in-class exercises).

Add a citation whenever you quote , paraphrase , or summarize information or ideas from a source. You should also give full source details in a bibliography or reference list at the end of your text.

The exact format of your citations depends on which citation style you are instructed to use. The most common styles are APA , MLA , and Chicago .

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The 28 Best Writing Websites of 2020

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Written by Scribendi

Updated in Feburary 2020 to reflect the best writing websites currently online.

Every writer needs a toolbox.

A writer's toolbox is filled with gadgets and gizmos that help a writer craft a story when he or she cannot do it alone. There are literal writers' toolboxes filled with assorted caffeinated beverages, napkins with plot outlines scribbled on them, and USB devices with novels backed up on them, and then there are metaphorical writers' toolboxes packed with character tics, favorite quotes, and—you guessed it—writing websites!

Writing websites are excellent resources to stash away in your toolbox (or browser bookmarks) to whip out in times of absolute distress (e.g., an existential crisis), piled-up excuses (i.e., writer's block), or uncertainty about the stages of writing (e.g., the publishing process ).

Scribendi's got a writer's toolbox fully stocked for you right here! Even better, these writing websites are categorized so you can find just what you're looking for at just the right moment. With everything from creative writing advice to publishing guidelines (and everything in between!), this list of the best websites for writers will be perfect for you to stow away in your bookmarks for when you need a helping hand.

Creative Writing Advice

These writing blogs give concrete advice for implementing literary techniques in your writing to help your work reach its full potential.

1. NaNoWriMo

The National Novel Writing Month blog provides inspirational posts year round for when you're stuck with writer's block, and offers guidelines on everything from the publishing process to finding feedback.

2. Write It Sideways

The articles for writers that can be found on Write It Sideways outline real-life advice (like writing grants, author branding, and gift buying) as well as writing tips and tricks, like spotting dialogue mistakes and learning how to build tension in your writing.

3. Helping Writers Become Authors

K.M. Weiland, the writer behind Helping Writers Become Authors, is an award-winning author who shares creative writing advice on story structure, character arcs, common writing mistakes, and much more!

4. Warrior Writers

Warrior Writers is run by the best-selling author Kristen Lamb, who guides writers using comprehensive and detailed posts that have a humorous and easy-to-read tone.

5. The Write Practice

Looking for articles and advice on creative writing? Consider checking out The Write Practice, which offers writing free (as well as paid) courses, and even holds writing contests for aspiring authors.

Writer's Lifestyle

The following resources are great for writers who have some extra time, or need to take a quick, productive break.

6. Write to Done

Write to Done clearly outlines useful topics for writers, like treating imposter syndrome, recovering from destructive criticism, and finding a pen name.

7. Brain Pickings

Maria Popova's writings on culture, books, and other eclectic subjects are always extremely interesting reading material for any writer with some spare time.

8. Daily Writing Tips

With a blend of fun and fun damental writing topics, this writing website provides the tips you need to succeed.

9. Well-Storied.

Run by Kristen Kieffer, this writing website offers more than just blog articles; it links authors with writing communities on social media, provides tutorials on Scrivener (a word-processing software designed for authors), and offers free courses on a variety of subjects.

10. Writers in the Storm

This blog, written by a group of authors who specialize in different genres, is meant to inspire writers and help them to hone their craft. If you are struggling with the storms that rage internally (e.g., self-doubt) and externally (e.g., the publishing industry), this site will be a haven for you.

Marketing/Blogging

These blogs help writers market their books and create blogging personas to engage an audience more effectively.

11. The Write Life

This writing website offers solid ideas for blogging, including working from home, pitching ideas, guest posting, and much more.

12. Goins, Writer

National best-selling author Jeff Goins shares real-life experiences and reflections on building an audience, shortcuts to success, and engaging a community in the age of Internet fame.

13. The Book Designer

As stated in its tagline, The Book Designer gives "practical advice to help build better books," which includes writing creative disclaimers, choosing the right platforms, and using social media efficiently.

14. Angela Booth

Angela Booth, a copywriter, ghostwriter, author, marketer, and writing coach, writes ample posts to help authors improve book sales and ensure that a book will be a financial success.

15. Create If Writing

Need marketing advice on promoting your writing without coming off as too pushy? Create If Writing "is all about authentic platform building" for writers seeking to sell their work. Kirsten Oliphant, the site creator, offers relatable advice in her blog articles and podcasts.

Find some of the best writing blogs below for help with the publishing process, from behind-the-scenes intel to publishing tips and tricks.

16. Jane Friedman

Jane Friedman has more than 20 years of experience in the book publishing industry. She provides informative articles on both the writing process and the publishing process.

17. The Creative Penn

Run by New York Times and USA Today best-selling author Joanna Penn, this site offers articles and other resources related to book writing, publishing, and marketing.

18. Writers Helping Writers ®

This one-stop shop for writing resources includes links to informative sites on publishing, marketing, and professional services for writers. You can also find information on protecting your writing from scammers and online plagiarists.

19. Publetariat

Publetariat gives practical information on networking, author websites, and the publishing process. It also shares links to big news stories in the world of publishing.

20. The Independent Publishing Magazine

The Independent Publishing Magazine hosts articles about many different parts of the publishing process, such as growing a following, avoiding authorship problems, and finding the right editor.

21. The Complete Self-Publishing Guide for Authors

Thinking about the self-publishing route? If so, this writing resource is invaluable! Kirkus's free Self-Publishing Guide for Authors, available as a PDF or in print, covers everything you need to know about a book's design, format, distribution, and more.

Writing Inspiration/Prompts

These sites are excellent for writers who are stuck in a rut and need some inspiration or concrete prompts to get them writing again.

22. Writing Prompts

Writing prompts are posted here daily, offering inspiration for writers in all genres. Some of the prompts focus on breaking through writer's block, while others focus on building characters or refining your dialogue-writing skills. If you're feeling as though you're in a writing rut, the site also posts inspirational quotes from famous authors.

23. Positive Writer

Positive Writer was created for writers with doubt—like the website's author, Bryan Hutchinson—to provide inspirational posts that help writers keep on writing.

24. Blots and Plots

The Blots and Plots blog instructs writers to stay in the habit of writing, targeting specific problems and demonstrating how it's possible to write a novel even with a full-time job.

25. Writer's Digest

This well-known and comprehensive site offers all manner of advice and resources for authors. Of particular interest are the site's many creative writing prompts. New prompts are published weekly, and writers post their results in the comments section.

26. Poets & Writers

Poets & Writers is a non-profit organization that fosters creative writers. On this site, you can learn about professional development, connect with other authors in your area, and find weekly writing prompts on poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction.

With Reedsy's list of over 250 writing prompts to get you started on your next creative project, this is one of the best websites for writers to find inspiration. It also offers a search filter to help you find prompts from your writing genre (e.g., romance, fantasy, mystery). If you'd like to contribute to the site and help other aspiring authors, there is an option to submit your own writing prompts, too.

28. Live Write Thrive

Run by C. S. Lakin, an accomplished novelist, copyeditor, and writing coach, Live Write Thrive provides a wealth of information from proficient guest bloggers with the intent to instruct, motivate, and encourage aspiring and veteran writers alike.

We hope these tools are just what you need to continue crafting masterful writing. With a list of writing websites designed to help writers with everything from brainstorming to proofreading to publishing, you'll be unstoppable!

Don't forget about Scribendi’s very own blog , which provides writers with all the guidance and tools they need to perfect their writing. Our articles cover every stage of the writing process, from planning and drafting any type of academic document to revising and finalizing it. Whether you’re looking for grammar tips, writing resources, or advice on any facet of the written word, Scribendi’s blog is the place for writers to perfect their craft.

Happy reading!

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Have You Read?

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9 Great Tools to Help with the Writing Process

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The 20 Best Book Blogs to Read in 2020

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Best essay writing websites according to A*Help

It’s easy to become overwhelmed with busy schedules and never-ending to-do lists, leaving no time for academic assignments. Thankfully, custom writing services are available to assist with a range of tasks, including essays and dissertations. However, finding a trustworthy provider can be challenging due to limited information and a lack of genuine reviews.

Our experts have conducted a real mystery shopping and compiled a list of the top essay writing services that can get the job done for you when you have a lot going on. To ensure transparency and consistency in our evaluations, we have developed our own rating system called A*Help score.

A*HELP (HIGHEST)
A*HELP (LOWEST)
PRICE (HIGHEST)
PRICE (LOWEST)
PAPER QUALITY (HIGHEST)
PAPER QUALITY (LOWEST)

PaperWriter is a professional academic writing service which offers a number of assignment options, including essays, reports, and even term papers. It offers student-friendly prices and a refund guarantee.

Essay Writing Websites: Finding the Best One for Your Needs

Academic help for students.

High school graduates are usually inspired by these ageless uplifting words of wisdom on their graduation day: “The world is your oyster”, “The sky’s the limit”, and “You can do anything you set your mind to”. At first, many still have enough power and strength to overcome every hill and mountain they meet on their academic route. But long nights, endless lectures, piles of projects and essays, pressing deadlines, and high demands can easily drain any aspiring learners. The A*Help team understands that taking a breather is a must. Here, we present a list of websites that will write essays for you, take the stress away, and most importantly, provide help with any assignment on this long and exciting educational voyage.

Academic Help is a transparent platform where you can find relevant information and valid recommendations on what essay writing help website to choose for your personalized needs. With that being said, we review and work with all sorts of homework help companies, be they fast, expensive, or cheap essay services. This way we make sure that they can stand the pressure of demanding university and college lives. Should we give our trusted readers the most unbiased opinion, we work with every platform and assess all available features and the final task result. Then, our experts filter through our experience and grade the service based on value-for-money, overall experience, and paper quality criteria.

Through our background, we have reviewed many companies with an abundance of options and features that can be the ideal fit for every learner who is currently baffled with their academic life. Hence, the A*Help team wants to remind you to check out the list of the best essay writing service when you are wading through the stressful and overwhelming process of juggling multiple assignments and responsibilities, which can be made easier with the help of a reputable essay writing website.

Why Use Essay Writing Websites?

Education life is tough. It is filled with a plethora of extracurricular commitments and personal aspirations. Being overwhelmed with various tasks it is only natural for students to search for help from within. College essay writing platforms are the solution to their trouble with time management and meeting deadlines. Essay writing websites alleviate this stress by taking on the burden of writing, allowing students to prioritize other important tasks . Moreover, expert writers with extensive experience in academic writing, ensure the delivery of well-researched, high-quality content that meets university standards and essay requirements. Besides, such platforms are adept at creating customized essays that align perfectly with these specifications, ensuring that the final product meets the expectations of the professor or the admissions board.

The key features when selecting the best website for essay writing

Stress and anxiety can shift a student’s focus and impede the search for a credible homework-help website. That’s why our testing strategy is a perfect balance of analytical and practical approaches. We understand where learners’ worries come from and our goal is to take them away and facilitate academic life.

We are as strict and meticulous in our evaluations as every professor. Unquestionably, we pay most of our attention to the final result of the essay. But we tend not to forget about the whole process of interaction with the service. To put it mildly, we do judge a book by its cover. And we check all essential aspects of the user journey.

The Academic Help team does not stop there. We strive to find legit paper writing websites. Hence, for a more professional take on things A*Help collaborates with US professors who give us expert commentary and evaluation.

The best essay writing website: the legitimate factor

Nobody wants to get scammed. The A*Help team values students’ precious time and money. Hence, even before considering working with any essay writing company, we peruse and analyze the available information online. Every feedback and insight is valuable for our reviews. We sieve through many comments on trusted resources not only to find the most positive testimonials but also negative ones. This is one of the most fundamental ways to check each essay-writing website’s legitimacy. Our aim is to share with the readers only professional and trusted resources. So, by gathering real users’ feedback and ensuring that the service is indeed informative, welcoming, and user-friendly, we verify its professionalism.

Our experts believe that this approach shows a more genuine and transparent view of the essay writing platform. Such a comprehensive technique gives an extensive understanding to students.

Final words: How to choose a top essay writing website

Finding the best paper writing site can be considered hard. But with the right approach and mindset, every learner can certainly find a platform that can take their academic trouble away. Top essay writing websites comprehend the level of anxiety students have and the endless projects that are always left unfinished.

So, to find the platform that covers all educational needs and shows high-quality results there is one thing that is worth remembering – personal research. We highly recommend focusing on the quality of content and paper, adherence to university standards, and the ability to meet specific essay requirements. Additionally, various key features, such as revisions, affordable pricing, secure payment options, wide scope of services, efficient customer support, and the legitimacy of the website should also be considered. Besides, a service that really aspires to be that one flexible helping platform, offers customized essays, keeps up with deadlines, and provides reliable services such as free revisions, a money-back guarantee, and originality reports.

What website writes essays for you without plagiarizing?

When searching for an essay writing website students should not forget about checking the plagiarism feature. Since there is a pool of platforms that are not reliable and can produce low-quality paper, every student can reassure themselves by contacting support and asking if there is a plagiarism checker on their website. Or whether the writers themselves run the written pieces through the plagiarism detector before submitting the work.

Are there any legit essay writing sites?

Homework-help writing companies cater to students’ academic needs by crafting papers according to their requirements and preferences. Academic Help has interacted with and tested a lot of services and products available online, so our team can state that there are definitely many legit paper writing websites for different students with various needs.

Judging by personal experience, the search is long and tough. But what we certainly recommend doing to everyone, is personal verification. We believe that it is only safe for students to check the service’s reputation, policies, and overall reputation online. Our team does the same but helps with our more in-depth approach, we can also double-check the platform’s attitude toward cheating and plagiarism, as well as their position on academic misconduct. This way, every learner can make a conscientious decision when looking for extra help on the Internet.

Can I trust online essay writers?

When students are alone on the Internet they feel less protected. The same happens when they try to search for a homework-help website online. Learners may doubt their choice and keep pondering: “is Academized a scam?”, or “is Grademinders legit?” , and “are there professional writers in CustomWritings?”. Without proper research and analysis, it is going to be a long road. First thing first, it is recommended to opt for legit essay writing websites that have many trusted users online. Additionally, every learner can browse through the feedback and reviews from former clients. While on that, we advise focusing the attention not only on the transparency policy but only on the level of service. Available plagiarism and grammar checkers, skilled and experienced writers, and high-quality papers in the outcome are the telltale signs that this essay writing website can be trusted.

Writer-customer communication

The cream of the crop when it comes to essay writing websites are the ones that let you chat directly with the writer. Why is it essential for students? For starters, it means learners can tell them exactly what they need, straight from the very beginning. No more Chinese whispers, just clear instructions so the writer knows exactly what the student is after.

Besides, coordinated customer-writer communication goes far beyond that. Sometimes, students are willing to chip in with ideas or ask how things are going with the assignment. Writers, on the other hand, would need to clarify some details about whether they have to add extra tweaks here and there.

Moreover, such an open online conversation helps to build trust. Meaning, writers always keep the students in the loop. So, when a service offers this kind of chat feature, it’s a good sign that this platform is serious about making sure its clients are satisfied with an outcome.

The main criteria for top-notch paper writing websites

Regardless of the aim, whether to find a service to get help with an essay, research paper, or thesis writing, there are many details to keep in mind. Undoubtedly the final goal is to find trustworthy and reliable sites whose experienced writers can provide a high-quality paper . Whether a student chooses to surf the Internet to search for proof or they decide to trust their gut feeling and try the service on their own, there are essential moments to consider.

Paper quality

The fundamental part of our experiment is the quality of the final paper. There are numerous reasons why learners want and need to seek assistance in writing their essays. Therefore, they have to keep in mind that if they set out to find an essay writing company that produces exceptional papers, the search can be a long one. As practice shows, there are enough homework-help services available online, many of which provide substandard outcomes, and some fail to address your specific subject matter requirements. Moreover, others tend to have fishy rules and policies that are deliberately deceiving students.

When the final decision is made, and learners are waiting to receive the final paper, we advise focusing their attention on the following things. A satisfactory written piece that follows the American university standards should tick the following boxes, such as a wide range of language aspects, namely grammar, spelling, and word choice. Besides, the reasoning, logic, integrity, and objectivity of the written piece are also subject to detailed verification. If all the aspects are taken into account and the final result follows the initial instructions this shows that the chosen service does put in a lot of work to show outstanding results.

Revisions are a necessary aspect of every reliable essay writing website. While students can provide enough vital information and detailed instructions on the final paper, and writers can produce high-level work, still the possibility to polish the final result should be available. More reliable platforms offer revisions free of charge. Say, a writer misunderstands the introductions or does not cover a certain aspect of the paper or the student is not satisfied with certain details and asks to refine some aspects. The bottom line is that it is natural to ask for a revision since you are already paying for a quality service . However, please note that if you do choose to request a revision there are individual rules on essay writing websites. Meaning, the writer cannot improve the paper in split seconds but propose an extended deadline for enhancing the final result. With that said students have to bear in mind that there can be some bumps on the road so it is better to have some time to spare in case revisions are needed to achieve the desired outcome. It is important to understand that the process of improving the paper may require some time. Hence, having extra time available is beneficial to ensure a smooth revision process.

Pricing and discounts

The best paper writing site is not only the one that writes high-quality pieces but also the most budget-friendly. This ratio is hard to reach, yet possible. So, the next essential feature that all learners should keep an eye on is pricing. Many who seek assistance in any form or shape want to find something on the more affordable end since students are not ready to splurge on more extra things. But there is one thing to consider: no matter how hard you want to save, different papers with different urgency deadlines will have different pricing . Imagine a scenario where a student completely forgets about a deadline given by their professor. They suddenly realize they need a two-page essay written, and they only have three to four hours to do it. They don’t want to risk failing the class due to this oversight. Since there is an urgency factor, many platforms would ask for a higher price for all the hassle.

However, many essay writing websites try to be flexible and customer-oriented. That’s why learners can always take advantage of using the platform’s bonuses, order coupons, loyalty programs, and referral schemes. These can help students save money and indicate that the service values its customers.

Payment options

In today’s digital age, providing a variety of secure payment options is crucial for any online business, including essay writing websites. Users should have the freedom to choose a payment method that they’re most comfortable with. While plenty of transaction options like credit or debit cards, bank transfers, or digital wallets such as PayPal or Apple Pay are usually offered, having these options is just part of the story.

What’s equally, if not more important, is how safe your money is during these transactions. Students have to be certain that these essay writing platforms are taking every precaution to safeguard their financial details from any potential risks. Top-rated essay-writing companies invest in secure payment gateways that protect users’ financial information from potential online threats. Such services use encryption technology to securely process transactions and keep sensitive data safe.

Moreover, it’s worth checking if the website has a clear and fair payment policy, so that questions like “ is 123helpme legit in payments?”, or “is Paper Coach a fraud?” do not worry you. We always recommend looking for details on refunds, or possible additional charges, and how the service handles disputes about payments. Knowing these details can help avoid any unpleasant surprises down the line.

Available services

The scope of available services is an essential element to consider when choosing an essay writing website. Students who seek a helping hand come from various educational backgrounds. Obviously, they require assistance with different task types. Starting from basic high school essays to more complex university-level research papers and dissertations. Moreover, services should also include different types of writing such as argumentative essays, narrative essays, descriptive essays, and expository essays. Furthermore, they should be able to handle specific tasks like admission essays, scholarship essays, or term papers, along with proofreading and editing services.

The ability of a service to cover a wide array of subjects is another important factor. Additionally, the service should have qualified writers across different fields of study. This ensures that no matter the topic, the service can provide an expert to handle your specific needs. Not only does it provide a peace of mind to the students but shows that the service can be trusted to handle different types of work.

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Sat / act prep online guides and tips, 11 places to find great college essay examples.

College Essays

Sure, you might know the theory behind what a college essay is supposed to sound and look like . But just like reading a description of the Golden Gate Bridge pales in comparison to seeing it in person, there’s no replacement for seeing actual college essays written by students just like you. Well, almost like you – they’ve since gotten into college.

But where do you find good sources for reading sample college essays? How can you make sure that these resources will actually strengthen and improve your writing? And what is the best way to use the college essay examples that you do find? In this article, I’ll go over the best books and websites for finding essays, I’ll point out a few to avoid, and I’ll explain how to make the most out of other people’s essays while avoiding common pitfalls.

Why Look At College Essay Examples?

There are some very good reasons for wanting to check out how other people have handled the college admissions essay.

First, because you'll be able to get a better sense of what colleges are looking for, you will necessarily broaden your own topic brainstorming past your first, easiest, and most c lichéd i deas . It's one thing to hear that a completely mundane topic is way better than one focusing on your greatest sports moment. But once you see other students writing about a family meal, or an obsession with a particular board game, or a love of cultivating cacti, you'll be convinced to find your essay in the small moments of your life.

Second, you'll see how your life and writing compares to that of your peers . The great diversity of voices, topics, tones, points of view will show you just how many things you could possibly write about, and how to keep the essay connected to your personality and your voice.

Finally, if you really do have a good story to tell about something that gets written about a lot, like divorce, pet death, a community service trip, or winning the big game, you can get ideas for how to approach a potentially lackluster essay topic in a novel and striking way .

What Makes A Good Sample College Essay Resource?

First, the basics. A source is only as good as its content, so make sure you're reading college essays that worked, from people who actually got into the schools they applied to . Also, it's best to focus on new essays (not older than 10-15 years), so you are reading what has worked in the most recent past, rather than seeing outdated ideas and historical perspectives.

Next, what you really want is diversity in voice and perspective . Make sure the essays featured come from many different kinds of students: either from applicants to both top and lower-tier schools; or from students with different ethnic, economic, and racial backgrounds; or from writers using both formal and more experimental essay techniques.

Finally, the best sources of admission essays will feature explanatory material . This will give each essay some kind of context: commentary on what makes the essay good, explanations of the drafting process, or, at least, biographical information about students. Without commentary or context, it’s hard to know what you’re supposed to learn from the essays you read.

Where to Find Great College Essay Examples

Here are my recommendations for excellent resources, as well as some warnings about resources that I think you should avoid.

College Essays Collected in Books

I've taken a look at many of the books that collect college essays, so here are my recommendations. I've divided them into three categories:

Excellent – meaning having really diverse essays or very helpful commentary on each essay, or both
Worthwhile – meaning either a helpful collection of essays without a lot of context or commentary, or some great advice but a narrow selection of essays geared toward one particular type of school
Don't Bother – not useful either as a source of college essays or as a source of essay-writing advice and explanations

Also, please note that although I’ve listed the Amazon prices for all the books, you should definitely check your school and public library for copies before buying them. And even if your library doesn't have a copy, ask them to request one either from another library in the same system or even from the Library of Congress through interlibrary loan .

Excellent Books

Heavenly Essays: 50 Narrative College Application Essays That Worked

Written by Janine W. Robinson, who blogs about college essays at EssayHell , this book features great sample essays. But it's Robinson's precise and clear explanations of how to use a narrative style in your essay to tell a story about your life that make the book really outstanding. Through long and detailed commentary on each essay, Robinson shows why narrative is exactly the kind of structure that works best for personal essays. You can check out sample sections from the book on her blog. The book retails for $10 new on Amazon.

On Writing the College Application Essay, 25th Anniversary Edition: The Key to Acceptance at the College of Your Choice

Harry Bauld used to be an admissions officer at Brown, so he certainly knows what he is talking about when he writes about how and why to avoid clichés and explains how to find and keep your specific voice . Bauld demonstrates his points with sample essays, showing how they go from first to final draft. The book is easy to read, uses humor to make points, and his advice will carry over into your college writing as well. It is $12.50 new on Amazon, but there are much cheaper used copies available there as well.

The Berkeley Book of College Essays: Personal Statements for California Universities and Other Select Schools

This compilation features college admissions essays written by seniors from Berkeley High School (which is not affiliated with UC Berkeley). Because the city of Berkeley is economically, racially, and ethnically very diverse, these essays are about many different interests, perspectives, and experiences, and are written in many different styles and tones . Although there is no commentary for the essays, this collection is a great way to get a sense of the broad array of essay possibilities.

Also, because many of the students from Berkeley High apply to UC schools, this collection separates out UC application essay packages. (If you are interested in UC, also check out our own guide to writing excellent UC essays !) This book is currently $15 on Amazon.

50 Successful Harvard Application Essays: What Worked for Them Can Help You Get into the College of Your Choice

Edited by the staff of the Harvard Crimson, this is a great collection of essays from a not particularly diverse group of students. It is very useful to see how the very top students approach the college essay, as long as their best effort neither intimidates nor stymies you. The contextual material is excellent, with helpful explanations of what makes each essay work well. This book retails for $12 new on Amazon, with much cheaper used copies also available.

Worthwhile Books

College Essays That Made a Difference, 6th Edition

This Princeton Review guide is mostly distinguished by its introductory material, which has detailed interviews with many different colleges at many different tiers about what role essays play in college applications, what kind of mistakes are okay, and what to write and not to write about. The sample essays themselves come without commentary, but each features a very short bio of the student, including test scores, GPA, a list of colleges where the person applied, and a list of colleges where the person got in. Right now, it's $11.50 new on Amazon, but there are cheaper used copies as well.

50 Successful Ivy League Application Essays

This collection of of college essays that worked, edited by Gen and Kelly Tanabe, has somewhat spare, but insightful, commentary explaining what each essay does well and what it could have done better . It also includes an interview with an admissions officer explaining how essays are used in admissions decisions and some comments from students about the writing process. The link above is to a downloadable PDF file.

50 Successful Stanford Application Essays: Get into Stanford and Other Top Colleges

If you like the Tanabes' approach (they are the authors of the previous book), then you will find this one useful as well. The narrow diversity of essay content and the style of commentary (thoughtful, but not particularly detailed or expansive) is very similar. It's priced at $13.25 new on Amazon with some used options as well.

Fiske Real College Essays That Work

The "Fiske" of the title is Edward Fiske, who used to be the Education editor of the NY Times, and who therefore has some experience with what colleges want from their applicants. The book itself features an introduction with some helpful essay-writing tips, a diverse selection of essays built around narrative, but unfortunately has very little commentary to go with each essay . It retails for $12.50 new on Amazon, with cheaper used options available.

2015 Elite College Application Essays

Although there's almost no commentary or discussion of what makes these essays work, this book is a reasonably good collection of essays from students who are now enrolled at Ivy and other top-tier schools. What's particularly appealing about this college essay compilation is how very new these essays are: all are from students who became freshmen in 2015 . The book is $14 new on Amazon.

Don't Bother

100 Successful College Application Essays

I'd recommend not spending your time on any of the editions of this collection. The essays are decades old in some cases, the topics are clichéd and boring, and there is little to no commentary to make any of them useful.

College Essays Published Online

I'll split my recommendations here into "worthwhile" and "don't bother" categories. There aren't any truly great collections of sample college essays online.

Individual College Websites . There are many essays published online by the various colleges where these students now go. This means these essays are guaranteed to be real, authentic, and to have worked on someone's application . Some of the essays even come with brief commentary by admissions officers about what makes them great. (The link will take you to our list of over 130 essays from more than 15 different colleges.)

Teen Ink Magazine . Teen Ink publishes all sorts of writing by teens, including college admission essays, which are split off into their own section on the site. The essays necessary feature a wide range of experiences and perspectives, so this is a great place to get a broad sense of what other students are writing about. The essays don't have any context except comment sections that run the gamut from generic “this is good” comments to some insight. Readers also get a chance to vote on which essays are featured as #1, #2, etc., which may be misleading because readers of Teen Ink aren't admissions officers.

Don't Bother

Watch out for paid websites like AdmitSee, CollegeMapper, and Acceptional, which claim to give you access to college essays for a monthly or fixed fee. Because of the paywall, there's no way to verify the quality of the essays these sites have. Also, there are enough books that you could borrow from your library that you don’t need to pay monthly fees to these places. Finally, I would particularly stay away from AdmidSee, which uses Amazon reviews for other essay resources as a marketing platform.

The Best Ways To Use College Admission Essay Samples

So now that you've rounded up a bunch of sample college essays, what should you do with them? Here are some tips for your next steps.

When Should You Read Essay Examples?

I'd advise waiting until after you've done some brainstorming of your own before you start immersing yourself in other people's work and ideas. (If you're not sure how to brainstorm, check out our guide to coming up with great college essay topics .)

This way, you can use other people’s essays to think about different possibilities for writing about your own topic. For example, looking at how other people tackled their life experience can show you:

how to focus on a different detail in your own story
how to change the insight you want to draw from your story
how to think about different ways to start and end your narrative

What Can Good College Essays Teach You?

There are both broad and specific learning opportunities to be found in reading other people's work.

Broadly speaking, seeing how other people are approaching the problem of writing a college essay can jog your own creative process. Likewise, reading a diversity of thoughts and voices will show you that even the most normal and boring seeming experiences be made into riveting essays.

More specifically, if you find essays from applicants to your target school, you can get some sense of the level of sophistication they expect to see from your writing.

Finally, good context and commentary on the essays can show you how they are put together and what makes them work. You can then put this advice to use when rewriting your essay later.

Pitfalls To Avoid

Of course, being surrounded by other people's work, especially when some of that work is much better than what you think you can manage, has its share of temptations. So what do you need to guard against when looking at sample essays?

Plagiarism. This one is basic and obvious. Do not copy these sample essays! Admissions officers have seen them all, read them all, memorized them all – you will not get away with it.

Copying and mimicry. Think of this as a softer kind of plagiarism. Even if you really like someone else’s style, don’t borrow it. Even if someone’s life sounds more exciting than yours, don’t steal a piece of it for your own essay. Why? Because if you don’t sound like yourself, it will be visible to an experienced reader (and guess what, admissions officers are very experienced readers). Also, if you’re writing about experiences that aren't yours, your unfamiliarity will show through the lack of believable details.

Resources for Essay Writing Advice

In researching this article, I came across books and websites that don't necessarily feature a lot of sample essays, but that give really excellent advice on writing your own college essay. I strongly recommend you spend some time checking them out.

Essay Hell blog . This great resource is written by Janine Anderson Robinson, an English teacher and a journalist, whose book Heavenly Essays I recommended above. The blog posts feature lots and lots of well-explained, detailed, easy to understand advice about how to write your essay, and are broken down into easy to understand, bite-sized nuggets of usefulness.

Slate 's Getting In podcast . The entire series is an interesting look at the college application process, with useful tips and explanations about all aspects what seniors are going through. Check out Episode 2: The Essay , in which a student gets feedback in real time on their essay from a former Princeton director of admissions and a panel of experts talk about essay dos and don’ts. The episode is 26 minutes long.

The College Essay Trap: Rescue Your College Application Essay From the "Maybe" Pile

This is incredibly concise and excellent explanation of what not to do and what to avoid when writing your personal statement. It's short, sweet, to the point, and is praised to the skies by legendary Princeton admissions dean Fred Hargadon. Currently $12 new on Amazon.

The Bottom Line

Look at college essay examples to broaden your own topic brainstorming and get ideas for fixing lackluster topics.
Look for resources with diverse and recent essays, from many different kinds of students and with explanatory material that explains what makes each essay good.
Look at essay samples after you’ve generated some of your own ideas to think about different possibilities for writing about your own topic.
Seeing how other people are approaching the problem of writing a college essay can jog your creative process.
Avoid both actual plagiarism and “borrowing”: don’t use someone else’s style, voice, or life experiences as your own.

What’s Next?

If you’re starting to work on college essays, check out our article laying out every single kind of essay prompt out there and a step by step guide to writing a great college essay .

Are you working on the Common App essay? Read our breakdown of the Common App prompts and our guide to picking the best prompt for you.

Or maybe you're interested in the University of California? Check out our complete guide to the UC personal statements .

Working on other pieces of your college applications? We’ve got guides to choosing the right college for you , writing about extracurriculars , and requesting teacher recommendations .

Thinking about taking the SAT one last time, or prepping for your first run at it? Read our ultimate guide to studying for the SAT and make sure you're as prepared as possible.

Want to improve your SAT score by 160 points or your ACT score by 4 points? We've written a guide for each test about the top 5 strategies you must be using to have a shot at improving your score. Download it for free now:

These recommendations are based solely on our knowledge and experience. If you purchase an item through one of our links, PrepScholar may receive a commission.

Anna scored in the 99th percentile on her SATs in high school, and went on to major in English at Princeton and to get her doctorate in English Literature at Columbia. She is passionate about improving student access to higher education.

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The 10 Best Essay Collections of the Decade

Ever tried. ever failed. no matter..

Friends, it’s true: the end of the decade approaches. It’s been a difficult, anxiety-provoking, morally compromised decade, but at least it’s been populated by some damn fine literature. We’ll take our silver linings where we can.

So, as is our hallowed duty as a literary and culture website—though with full awareness of the potentially fruitless and endlessly contestable nature of the task—in the coming weeks, we’ll be taking a look at the best and most important (these being not always the same) books of the decade that was. We will do this, of course, by means of a variety of lists. We began with the best debut novels , the best short story collections , the best poetry collections , and the best memoirs of the decade , and we have now reached the fifth list in our series: the best essay collections published in English between 2010 and 2019.

The following books were chosen after much debate (and several rounds of voting) by the Literary Hub staff. Tears were spilled, feelings were hurt, books were re-read. And as you’ll shortly see, we had a hard time choosing just ten—so we’ve also included a list of dissenting opinions, and an even longer list of also-rans. As ever, free to add any of your own favorites that we’ve missed in the comments below.

The Top Ten

Oliver sacks, the mind’s eye (2010).

Toward the end of his life, maybe suspecting or sensing that it was coming to a close, Dr. Oliver Sacks tended to focus his efforts on sweeping intellectual projects like On the Move (a memoir), The River of Consciousness (a hybrid intellectual history), and Hallucinations (a book-length meditation on, what else, hallucinations). But in 2010, he gave us one more classic in the style that first made him famous, a form he revolutionized and brought into the contemporary literary canon: the medical case study as essay. In The Mind’s Eye , Sacks focuses on vision, expanding the notion to embrace not only how we see the world, but also how we map that world onto our brains when our eyes are closed and we’re communing with the deeper recesses of consciousness. Relaying histories of patients and public figures, as well as his own history of ocular cancer (the condition that would eventually spread and contribute to his death), Sacks uses vision as a lens through which to see all of what makes us human, what binds us together, and what keeps us painfully apart. The essays that make up this collection are quintessential Sacks: sensitive, searching, with an expertise that conveys scientific information and experimentation in terms we can not only comprehend, but which also expand how we see life carrying on around us. The case studies of “Stereo Sue,” of the concert pianist Lillian Kalir, and of Howard, the mystery novelist who can no longer read, are highlights of the collection, but each essay is a kind of gem, mined and polished by one of the great storytellers of our era. –Dwyer Murphy, CrimeReads Managing Editor

John Jeremiah Sullivan, Pulphead (2011)

The American essay was having a moment at the beginning of the decade, and Pulphead was smack in the middle. Without any hard data, I can tell you that this collection of John Jeremiah Sullivan’s magazine features—published primarily in GQ , but also in The Paris Review , and Harper’s —was the only full book of essays most of my literary friends had read since Slouching Towards Bethlehem , and probably one of the only full books of essays they had even heard of.

Well, we all picked a good one. Every essay in Pulphead is brilliant and entertaining, and illuminates some small corner of the American experience—even if it’s just one house, with Sullivan and an aging writer inside (“Mr. Lytle” is in fact a standout in a collection with no filler; fittingly, it won a National Magazine Award and a Pushcart Prize). But what are they about? Oh, Axl Rose, Christian Rock festivals, living around the filming of One Tree Hill , the Tea Party movement, Michael Jackson, Bunny Wailer, the influence of animals, and by god, the Miz (of Real World/Road Rules Challenge fame).

But as Dan Kois has pointed out , what connects these essays, apart from their general tone and excellence, is “their author’s essential curiosity about the world, his eye for the perfect detail, and his great good humor in revealing both his subjects’ and his own foibles.” They are also extremely well written, drawing much from fictional techniques and sentence craft, their literary pleasures so acute and remarkable that James Wood began his review of the collection in The New Yorker with a quiz: “Are the following sentences the beginnings of essays or of short stories?” (It was not a hard quiz, considering the context.)

It’s hard not to feel, reading this collection, like someone reached into your brain, took out the half-baked stuff you talk about with your friends, researched it, lived it, and represented it to you smarter and better and more thoroughly than you ever could. So read it in awe if you must, but read it. –Emily Temple, Senior Editor

Aleksandar Hemon, The Book of My Lives (2013)

Such is the sentence-level virtuosity of Aleksandar Hemon—the Bosnian-American writer, essayist, and critic—that throughout his career he has frequently been compared to the granddaddy of borrowed language prose stylists: Vladimir Nabokov. While it is, of course, objectively remarkable that anyone could write so beautifully in a language they learned in their twenties, what I admire most about Hemon’s work is the way in which he infuses every essay and story and novel with both a deep humanity and a controlled (but never subdued) fury. He can also be damn funny. Hemon grew up in Sarajevo and left in 1992 to study in Chicago, where he almost immediately found himself stranded, forced to watch from afar as his beloved home city was subjected to a relentless four-year bombardment, the longest siege of a capital in the history of modern warfare. This extraordinary memoir-in-essays is many things: it’s a love letter to both the family that raised him and the family he built in exile; it’s a rich, joyous, and complex portrait of a place the 90s made synonymous with war and devastation; and it’s an elegy for the wrenching loss of precious things. There’s an essay about coming of age in Sarajevo and another about why he can’t bring himself to leave Chicago. There are stories about relationships forged and maintained on the soccer pitch or over the chessboard, and stories about neighbors and mentors turned monstrous by ethnic prejudice. As a chorus they sing with insight, wry humor, and unimaginable sorrow. I am not exaggerating when I say that the collection’s devastating final piece, “The Aquarium”—which details his infant daughter’s brain tumor and the agonizing months which led up to her death—remains the most painful essay I have ever read. –Dan Sheehan, Book Marks Editor

Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass (2013)

Of every essay in my relentlessly earmarked copy of Braiding Sweetgrass , Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer’s gorgeously rendered argument for why and how we should keep going, there’s one that especially hits home: her account of professor-turned-forester Franz Dolp. When Dolp, several decades ago, revisited the farm that he had once shared with his ex-wife, he found a scene of destruction: The farm’s new owners had razed the land where he had tried to build a life. “I sat among the stumps and the swirling red dust and I cried,” he wrote in his journal.

So many in my generation (and younger) feel this kind of helplessness–and considerable rage–at finding ourselves newly adult in a world where those in power seem determined to abandon or destroy everything that human bodies have always needed to survive: air, water, land. Asking any single book to speak to this helplessness feels unfair, somehow; yet, Braiding Sweetgrass does, by weaving descriptions of indigenous tradition with the environmental sciences in order to show what survival has looked like over the course of many millennia. Kimmerer’s essays describe her personal experience as a Potawotami woman, plant ecologist, and teacher alongside stories of the many ways that humans have lived in relationship to other species. Whether describing Dolp’s work–he left the stumps for a life of forest restoration on the Oregon coast–or the work of others in maple sugar harvesting, creating black ash baskets, or planting a Three Sisters garden of corn, beans, and squash, she brings hope. “In ripe ears and swelling fruit, they counsel us that all gifts are multiplied in relationship,” she writes of the Three Sisters, which all sustain one another as they grow. “This is how the world keeps going.” –Corinne Segal, Senior Editor

Hilton Als, White Girls (2013)

In a world where we are so often reduced to one essential self, Hilton Als’ breathtaking book of critical essays, White Girls , which meditates on the ways he and other subjects read, project and absorb parts of white femininity, is a radically liberating book. It’s one of the only works of critical thinking that doesn’t ask the reader, its author or anyone he writes about to stoop before the doorframe of complete legibility before entering. Something he also permitted the subjects and readers of his first book, the glorious book-length essay, The Women , a series of riffs and psychological portraits of Dorothy Dean, Owen Dodson, and the author’s own mother, among others. One of the shifts of that book, uncommon at the time, was how it acknowledges the way we inhabit bodies made up of variously gendered influences. To read White Girls now is to experience the utter freedom of this gift and to marvel at Als’ tremendous versatility and intelligence.

He is easily the most diversely talented American critic alive. He can write into genres like pop music and film where being part of an audience is a fantasy happening in the dark. He’s also wired enough to know how the art world builds reputations on the nod of rich white patrons, a significant collision in a time when Jean-Michel Basquiat is America’s most expensive modern artist. Als’ swerving and always moving grip on performance means he’s especially good on describing the effect of art which is volatile and unstable and built on the mingling of made-up concepts and the hard fact of their effect on behavior, such as race. Writing on Flannery O’Connor for instance he alone puts a finger on her “uneasy and unavoidable union between black and white, the sacred and the profane, the shit and the stars.” From Eminem to Richard Pryor, André Leon Talley to Michael Jackson, Als enters the life and work of numerous artists here who turn the fascinations of race and with whiteness into fury and song and describes the complexity of their beauty like his life depended upon it. There are also brief memoirs here that will stop your heart. This is an essential work to understanding American culture. –John Freeman, Executive Editor

Eula Biss, On Immunity (2014)

We move through the world as if we can protect ourselves from its myriad dangers, exercising what little agency we have in an effort to keep at bay those fears that gather at the edges of any given life: of loss, illness, disaster, death. It is these fears—amplified by the birth of her first child—that Eula Biss confronts in her essential 2014 essay collection, On Immunity . As any great essayist does, Biss moves outward in concentric circles from her own very private view of the world to reveal wider truths, discovering as she does a culture consumed by anxiety at the pervasive toxicity of contemporary life. As Biss interrogates this culture—of privilege, of whiteness—she interrogates herself, questioning the flimsy ways in which we arm ourselves with science or superstition against the impurities of daily existence.

Five years on from its publication, it is dismaying that On Immunity feels as urgent (and necessary) a defense of basic science as ever. Vaccination, we learn, is derived from vacca —for cow—after the 17th-century discovery that a small application of cowpox was often enough to inoculate against the scourge of smallpox, an etymological digression that belies modern conspiratorial fears of Big Pharma and its vaccination agenda. But Biss never scolds or belittles the fears of others, and in her generosity and openness pulls off a neat (and important) trick: insofar as we are of the very world we fear, she seems to be suggesting, we ourselves are impure, have always been so, permeable, vulnerable, yet so much stronger than we think. –Jonny Diamond, Editor-in-Chief

Rebecca Solnit, The Mother of All Questions (2016)

When Rebecca Solnit’s essay, “Men Explain Things to Me,” was published in 2008, it quickly became a cultural phenomenon unlike almost any other in recent memory, assigning language to a behavior that almost every woman has witnessed—mansplaining—and, in the course of identifying that behavior, spurring a movement, online and offline, to share the ways in which patriarchal arrogance has intersected all our lives. (It would also come to be the titular essay in her collection published in 2014.) The Mother of All Questions follows up on that work and takes it further in order to examine the nature of self-expression—who is afforded it and denied it, what institutions have been put in place to limit it, and what happens when it is employed by women. Solnit has a singular gift for describing and decoding the misogynistic dynamics that govern the world so universally that they can seem invisible and the gendered violence that is so common as to seem unremarkable; this naming is powerful, and it opens space for sharing the stories that shape our lives.

The Mother of All Questions, comprised of essays written between 2014 and 2016, in many ways armed us with some of the tools necessary to survive the gaslighting of the Trump years, in which many of us—and especially women—have continued to hear from those in power that the things we see and hear do not exist and never existed. Solnit also acknowledges that labels like “woman,” and other gendered labels, are identities that are fluid in reality; in reviewing the book for The New Yorker , Moira Donegan suggested that, “One useful working definition of a woman might be ‘someone who experiences misogyny.'” Whichever words we use, Solnit writes in the introduction to the book that “when words break through unspeakability, what was tolerated by a society sometimes becomes intolerable.” This storytelling work has always been vital; it continues to be vital, and in this book, it is brilliantly done. –Corinne Segal, Senior Editor

Valeria Luiselli, Tell Me How It Ends (2017)

The newly minted MacArthur fellow Valeria Luiselli’s four-part (but really six-part) essay Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions was inspired by her time spent volunteering at the federal immigration court in New York City, working as an interpreter for undocumented, unaccompanied migrant children who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border. Written concurrently with her novel Lost Children Archive (a fictional exploration of the same topic), Luiselli’s essay offers a fascinating conceit, the fashioning of an argument from the questions on the government intake form given to these children to process their arrivals. (Aside from the fact that this essay is a heartbreaking masterpiece, this is such a good conceit—transforming a cold, reproducible administrative document into highly personal literature.) Luiselli interweaves a grounded discussion of the questionnaire with a narrative of the road trip Luiselli takes with her husband and family, across America, while they (both Mexican citizens) wait for their own Green Card applications to be processed. It is on this trip when Luiselli reflects on the thousands of migrant children mysteriously traveling across the border by themselves. But the real point of the essay is to actually delve into the real stories of some of these children, which are agonizing, as well as to gravely, clearly expose what literally happens, procedural, when they do arrive—from forms to courts, as they’re swallowed by a bureaucratic vortex. Amid all of this, Luiselli also takes on more, exploring the larger contextual relationship between the United States of America and Mexico (as well as other countries in Central America, more broadly) as it has evolved to our current, adverse moment. Tell Me How It Ends is so small, but it is so passionate and vigorous: it desperately accomplishes in its less-than-100-pages-of-prose what centuries and miles and endless records of federal bureaucracy have never been able, and have never cared, to do: reverse the dehumanization of Latin American immigrants that occurs once they set foot in this country. –Olivia Rutigliano, CrimeReads Editorial Fellow

Zadie Smith, Feel Free (2018)

In the essay “Meet Justin Bieber!” in Feel Free , Zadie Smith writes that her interest in Justin Bieber is not an interest in the interiority of the singer himself, but in “the idea of the love object”. This essay—in which Smith imagines a meeting between Bieber and the late philosopher Martin Buber (“Bieber and Buber are alternative spellings of the same German surname,” she explains in one of many winning footnotes. “Who am I to ignore these hints from the universe?”). Smith allows that this premise is a bit premise -y: “I know, I know.” Still, the resulting essay is a very funny, very smart, and un-tricky exploration of individuality and true “meeting,” with a dash of late capitalism thrown in for good measure. The melding of high and low culture is the bread and butter of pretty much every prestige publication on the internet these days (and certainly of the Twitter feeds of all “public intellectuals”), but the essays in Smith’s collection don’t feel familiar—perhaps because hers is, as we’ve long known, an uncommon skill. Though I believe Smith could probably write compellingly about anything, she chooses her subjects wisely. She writes with as much electricity about Brexit as the aforementioned Beliebers—and each essay is utterly engrossing. “She contains multitudes, but her point is we all do,” writes Hermione Hoby in her review of the collection in The New Republic . “At the same time, we are, in our endless difference, nobody but ourselves.” –Jessie Gaynor, Social Media Editor

Tressie McMillan Cottom, Thick: And Other Essays (2019)

Tressie McMillan Cottom is an academic who has transcended the ivory tower to become the sort of public intellectual who can easily appear on radio or television talk shows to discuss race, gender, and capitalism. Her collection of essays reflects this duality, blending scholarly work with memoir to create a collection on the black female experience in postmodern America that’s “intersectional analysis with a side of pop culture.” The essays range from an analysis of sexual violence, to populist politics, to social media, but in centering her own experiences throughout, the collection becomes something unlike other pieces of criticism of contemporary culture. In explaining the title, she reflects on what an editor had said about her work: “I was too readable to be academic, too deep to be popular, too country black to be literary, and too naïve to show the rigor of my thinking in the complexity of my prose. I had wanted to create something meaningful that sounded not only like me, but like all of me. It was too thick.” One of the most powerful essays in the book is “Dying to be Competent” which begins with her unpacking the idiocy of LinkedIn (and the myth of meritocracy) and ends with a description of her miscarriage, the mishandling of black woman’s pain, and a condemnation of healthcare bureaucracy. A finalist for the 2019 National Book Award for Nonfiction, Thick confirms McMillan Cottom as one of our most fearless public intellectuals and one of the most vital. –Emily Firetog, Deputy Editor

Dissenting Opinions

The following books were just barely nudged out of the top ten, but we (or at least one of us) couldn’t let them pass without comment.

Elif Batuman, The Possessed (2010)

In The Possessed Elif Batuman indulges her love of Russian literature and the result is hilarious and remarkable. Each essay of the collection chronicles some adventure or other that she had while in graduate school for Comparative Literature and each is more unpredictable than the next. There’s the time a “well-known 20th-centuryist” gave a graduate student the finger; and the time when Batuman ended up living in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, for a summer; and the time that she convinced herself Tolstoy was murdered and spent the length of the Tolstoy Conference in Yasnaya Polyana considering clues and motives. Rich in historic detail about Russian authors and literature and thoughtfully constructed, each essay is an amalgam of critical analysis, cultural criticism, and serious contemplation of big ideas like that of identity, intellectual legacy, and authorship. With wit and a serpentine-like shape to her narratives, Batuman adopts a form reminiscent of a Socratic discourse, setting up questions at the beginning of her essays and then following digressions that more or less entreat the reader to synthesize the answer for herself. The digressions are always amusing and arguably the backbone of the collection, relaying absurd anecdotes with foreign scholars or awkward, surreal encounters with Eastern European strangers. Central also to the collection are Batuman’s intellectual asides where she entertains a theory—like the “problem of the person”: the inability to ever wholly capture one’s character—that ultimately layer the book’s themes. “You are certainly my most entertaining student,” a professor said to Batuman. But she is also curious and enthusiastic and reflective and so knowledgeable that she might even convince you (she has me!) that you too love Russian literature as much as she does. –Eleni Theodoropoulos, Editorial Fellow

Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist (2014)

Roxane Gay’s now-classic essay collection is a book that will make you laugh, think, cry, and then wonder, how can cultural criticism be this fun? My favorite essays in the book include Gay’s musings on competitive Scrabble, her stranded-in-academia dispatches, and her joyous film and television criticism, but given the breadth of topics Roxane Gay can discuss in an entertaining manner, there’s something for everyone in this one. This book is accessible because feminism itself should be accessible – Roxane Gay is as likely to draw inspiration from YA novels, or middle-brow shows about friendship, as she is to introduce concepts from the academic world, and if there’s anyone I trust to bridge the gap between high culture, low culture, and pop culture, it’s the Goddess of Twitter. I used to host a book club dedicated to radical reads, and this was one of the first picks for the club; a week after the book club met, I spied a few of the attendees meeting in the café of the bookstore, and found out that they had bonded so much over discussing Bad Feminist that they couldn’t wait for the next meeting of the book club to keep discussing politics and intersectionality, and that, in a nutshell, is the power of Roxane. –Molly Odintz, CrimeReads Associate Editor

Rivka Galchen, Little Labors (2016)

Generally, I find stories about the trials and tribulations of child-having to be of limited appeal—useful, maybe, insofar as they offer validation that other people have also endured the bizarre realities of living with a tiny human, but otherwise liable to drift into the musings of parents thrilled at the simple fact of their own fecundity, as if they were the first ones to figure the process out (or not). But Little Labors is not simply an essay collection about motherhood, perhaps because Galchen initially “didn’t want to write about” her new baby—mostly, she writes, “because I had never been interested in babies, or mothers; in fact, those subjects had seemed perfectly not interesting to me.” Like many new mothers, though, Galchen soon discovered her baby—which she refers to sometimes as “the puma”—to be a preoccupying thought, demanding to be written about. Galchen’s interest isn’t just in her own progeny, but in babies in literature (“Literature has more dogs than babies, and also more abortions”), The Pillow Book , the eleventh-century collection of musings by Sei Shōnagon, and writers who are mothers. There are sections that made me laugh out loud, like when Galchen continually finds herself in an elevator with a neighbor who never fails to remark on the puma’s size. There are also deeper, darker musings, like the realization that the baby means “that it’s not permissible to die. There are days when this does not feel good.” It is a slim collection that I happened to read at the perfect time, and it remains one of my favorites of the decade. –Emily Firetog, Deputy Editor

Charlie Fox, This Young Monster (2017)

On social media as in his writing, British art critic Charlie Fox rejects lucidity for allusion and doesn’t quite answer the Twitter textbox’s persistent question: “What’s happening?” These days, it’s hard to tell. This Young Monster (2017), Fox’s first book,was published a few months after Donald Trump’s election, and at one point Fox takes a swipe at a man he judges “direct from a nightmare and just a repulsive fucking goon.” Fox doesn’t linger on politics, though, since most of the monsters he looks at “embody otherness and make it into art, ripping any conventional idea of beauty to shreds and replacing it with something weird and troubling of their own invention.”

If clichés are loathed because they conform to what philosopher Georges Bataille called “the common measure,” then monsters are rebellious non-sequiturs, comedic or horrific derailments from a classical ideal. Perverts in the most literal sense, monsters have gone astray from some “proper” course. The book’s nine chapters, which are about a specific monster or type of monster, are full of callbacks to familiar and lesser-known media. Fox cites visual art, film, songs, and books with the screwy buoyancy of a savant. Take one of his essays, “Spook House,” framed as a stage play with two principal characters, Klaus (“an intoxicated young skinhead vampire”) and Hermione (“a teen sorceress with green skin and jet-black hair” who looks more like The Wicked Witch than her namesake). The chorus is a troupe of trick-or-treaters. Using the filmmaker Cameron Jamie as a starting point, the rest is free association on gothic decadence and Detroit and L.A. as cities of the dead. All the while, Klaus quotes from Artforum , Dazed & Confused , and Time Out. It’s a technical feat that makes fictionalized dialogue a conveyor belt for cultural criticism.

In Fox’s imagination, David Bowie and the Hydra coexist alongside Peter Pan, Dennis Hopper, and the maenads. Fox’s book reaches for the monster’s mask, not really to peel it off but to feel and smell the rubber schnoz, to know how it’s made before making sure it’s still snugly set. With a stylistic blend of arthouse suavity and B-movie chic, This Young Monster considers how monsters in culture are made. Aren’t the scariest things made in post-production? Isn’t the creature just duplicity, like a looping choir or a dubbed scream? –Aaron Robertson, Assistant Editor

Elena Passarello, Animals Strike Curious Poses (2017)

Elena Passarello’s collection of essays Animals Strike Curious Poses picks out infamous animals and grants them the voice, narrative, and history they deserve. Not only is a collection like this relevant during the sixth extinction but it is an ambitious historical and anthropological undertaking, which Passarello has tackled with thorough research and a playful tone that rather than compromise her subject, complicates and humanizes it. Passarello’s intention is to investigate the role of animals across the span of human civilization and in doing so, to construct a timeline of humanity as told through people’s interactions with said animals. “Of all the images that make our world, animal images are particularly buried inside us,” Passarello writes in her first essay, to introduce us to the object of the book and also to the oldest of her chosen characters: Yuka, a 39,000-year-old mummified woolly mammoth discovered in the Siberian permafrost in 2010. It was an occasion so remarkable and so unfathomable given the span of human civilization that Passarello says of Yuka: “Since language is epically younger than both thought and experience, ‘woolly mammoth’ means, to a human brain, something more like time.” The essay ends with a character placing a hand on a cave drawing of a woolly mammoth, accompanied by a phrase which encapsulates the author’s vision for the book: “And he becomes the mammoth so he can envision the mammoth.” In Passarello’s hands the imagined boundaries between the animal, natural, and human world disintegrate and what emerges is a cohesive if baffling integrated history of life. With the accuracy and tenacity of a journalist and the spirit of a storyteller, Elena Passarello has assembled a modern bestiary worthy of contemplation and awe. –Eleni Theodoropoulos, Editorial Fellow

Esmé Weijun Wang, The Collected Schizophrenias (2019)

Esmé Weijun Wang’s collection of essays is a kaleidoscopic look at mental health and the lives affected by the schizophrenias. Each essay takes on a different aspect of the topic, but you’ll want to read them together for a holistic perspective. Esmé Weijun Wang generously begins The Collected Schizophrenias by acknowledging the stereotype, “Schizophrenia terrifies. It is the archetypal disorder of lunacy.” From there, she walks us through the technical language, breaks down the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual ( DSM-5 )’s clinical definition. And then she gets very personal, telling us about how she came to her own diagnosis and the way it’s touched her daily life (her relationships, her ideas about motherhood). Esmé Weijun Wang is uniquely situated to write about this topic. As a former lab researcher at Stanford, she turns a precise, analytical eye to her experience while simultaneously unfolding everything with great patience for her reader. Throughout, she brilliantly dissects the language around mental health. (On saying “a person living with bipolar disorder” instead of using “bipolar” as the sole subject: “…we are not our diseases. We are instead individuals with disorders and malfunctions. Our conditions lie over us like smallpox blankets; we are one thing and the illness is another.”) She pinpoints the ways she arms herself against anticipated reactions to the schizophrenias: high fashion, having attended an Ivy League institution. In a particularly piercing essay, she traces mental illness back through her family tree. She also places her story within more mainstream cultural contexts, calling on groundbreaking exposés about the dangerous of institutionalization and depictions of mental illness in television and film (like the infamous Slender Man case, in which two young girls stab their best friend because an invented Internet figure told them to). At once intimate and far-reaching, The Collected Schizophrenias is an informative and important (and let’s not forget artful) work. I’ve never read a collection quite so beautifully-written and laid-bare as this. –Katie Yee, Book Marks Assistant Editor

Ross Gay, The Book of Delights (2019)

When Ross Gay began writing what would become The Book of Delights, he envisioned it as a project of daily essays, each focused on a moment or point of delight in his day. This plan quickly disintegrated; on day four, he skipped his self-imposed assignment and decided to “in honor and love, delight in blowing it off.” (Clearly, “blowing it off” is a relative term here, as he still produced the book.) Ross Gay is a generous teacher of how to live, and this moment of reveling in self-compassion is one lesson among many in The Book of Delights , which wanders from moments of connection with strangers to a shade of “red I don’t think I actually have words for,” a text from a friend reading “I love you breadfruit,” and “the sun like a guiding hand on my back, saying everything is possible. Everything .”

Gay does not linger on any one subject for long, creating the sense that delight is a product not of extenuating circumstances, but of our attention; his attunement to the possibilities of a single day, and awareness of all the small moments that produce delight, are a model for life amid the warring factions of the attention economy. These small moments range from the physical–hugging a stranger, transplanting fig cuttings–to the spiritual and philosophical, giving the impression of sitting beside Gay in his garden as he thinks out loud in real time. It’s a privilege to listen. –Corinne Segal, Senior Editor

Honorable Mentions

A selection of other books that we seriously considered for both lists—just to be extra about it (and because decisions are hard).

Terry Castle, The Professor and Other Writings (2010) · Joyce Carol Oates, In Rough Country (2010) · Geoff Dyer, Otherwise Known as the Human Condition (2011) · Christopher Hitchens, Arguably (2011) · Roberto Bolaño, tr. Natasha Wimmer, Between Parentheses (2011) · Dubravka Ugresic, tr. David Williams, Karaoke Culture (2011) · Tom Bissell, Magic Hours (2012) · Kevin Young, The Grey Album (2012) · William H. Gass, Life Sentences: Literary Judgments and Accounts (2012) · Mary Ruefle, Madness, Rack, and Honey (2012) · Herta Müller, tr. Geoffrey Mulligan, Cristina and Her Double (2013) · Leslie Jamison, The Empathy Exams (2014) · Meghan Daum, The Unspeakable (2014) · Daphne Merkin, The Fame Lunches (2014) · Charles D’Ambrosio, Loitering (2015) · Wendy Walters, Multiply/Divide (2015) · Colm Tóibín, On Elizabeth Bishop (2015) · Renee Gladman, Calamities (2016) · Jesmyn Ward, ed. The Fire This Time (2016) · Lindy West, Shrill (2016) · Mary Oliver, Upstream (2016) · Emily Witt, Future Sex (2016) · Olivia Laing, The Lonely City (2016) · Mark Greif, Against Everything (2016) · Durga Chew-Bose, Too Much and Not the Mood (2017) · Sarah Gerard, Sunshine State (2017) · Jim Harrison, A Really Big Lunch (2017) · J.M. Coetzee, Late Essays: 2006-2017 (2017) · Melissa Febos, Abandon Me (2017) · Louise Glück, American Originality (2017) · Joan Didion, South and West (2017) · Tom McCarthy, Typewriters, Bombs, Jellyfish (2017) · Hanif Abdurraqib, They Can’t Kill Us Until they Kill Us (2017) · Ta-Nehisi Coates, We Were Eight Years in Power (2017) · Samantha Irby, We Are Never Meeting in Real Life (2017) · Alexander Chee, How to Write an Autobiographical Novel (2018) · Alice Bolin, Dead Girls (2018) · Marilynne Robinson, What Are We Doing Here? (2018) · Lorrie Moore, See What Can Be Done (2018) · Maggie O’Farrell, I Am I Am I Am (2018) · Ijeoma Oluo, So You Want to Talk About Race (2018) · Rachel Cusk, Coventry (2019) · Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror (2019) · Emily Bernard, Black is the Body (2019) · Toni Morrison, The Source of Self-Regard (2019) · Margaret Renkl, Late Migrations (2019) · Rachel Munroe, Savage Appetites (2019) · Robert A. Caro, Working (2019) · Arundhati Roy, My Seditious Heart (2019).

Emily Temple

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11 English Writing Websites That’ll Have You Writing Like a Professional

Being able to write well in English is an incredible skill.

This is true for both English language learners and even for native speakers!

It goes without saying that writing in English is a key ability for the future .

That’s why we’re going to look at some of the top online resources to perfect the skill of writing in English .

Types of English Writing Websites

11 wonderful websites to power up your english writing skills, hemingway app, quick and dirty tips from grammar girl, write & improve with cambridge, project gutenberg, british council, how to use writing websites effectively, and one more thing....

Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)

Choosing the right resources is the most important step. But to do this, you need to consider what exactly you need help with! Is it some basic grammar and spelling? Or more of an in-depth course and introduction to English writing in general?

Let’s take a look at some of the key categories that you need to consider.

Spelling and Grammar Checkers: Spelling and grammar checkers are a great way to make sure that your writing is clear, grammatically correct and accurate. These websites would be best suited to an advanced writer who writes large amounts or writes frequently. The reason they aren’t recommended for a beginning learner is that it’s important to develop the skill of checking and editing your own writing first.
Lessons and classes: If you’re a new learner or are looking to focus on a particular area of writing, then taking an English writing class might be a good option. They’re a great way to get a general introduction to English writing. You can also go deeper on a particular topic.
Writing advice: Blogs and websites are fantastic sources of information regarding English writing. You can find helpful tips, advice from writers and general information regarding spelling and grammar. Websites like YouTube are also useful resources to find specific information.
Creative Writing and Prompts: Sites that provide tips on creative writing and prompts can be a great source of inspiration. Creative writing is an excellent way to practice new vocabulary and different writing styles. It can also be more fun than academic writing!
Journaling and Habit-forming: There are many services that focus on helping you reach a writing goal of a particular number of words or a streak of days. Sometimes simply sitting down and doing the writing itself can be a difficult challenge! Journaling and freewriting websites can help maintain your motivation. They can also keep you on track and show you important information regarding your work rate.

In this post, we’ll be looking at the top websites from all these categories. This is to give you a nice selection and variety of websites to choose from. If you want to start writing English like a professional, then you should consider some of these options!

Grammarly is a free website and app that fixes your writing. You have the option of typing directly into the platform or copying large blocks of text (such as an essay) for correction. There’s also an extension that works with a number of platforms such as Google Docs, MS Office, Gmail and many other online writing websites.

Grammarly is like having a personal editor read your English writing. The corrections are always offered as suggestions, instead of auto-corrections, so you’ll have a chance to review your mistakes before changing them.

However, because the app is aimed toward English natives I’d recommend Grammarly to an intermediate to advanced level writer. This is because the app looks to correct errors that native writers would make and isn’t designed specifically with English learners in mind.

For example, a native speaker will be using Grammarly to check for common errors such as a lack of apostrophes in contractions or using too much passive voice. It might offer suggestions if you’re using one word too often and it can even make a database check for plagiarism.

If you’re a beginner ESL writer, you may find this feedback helpful. However, feedback on word choice, formality, structure and staying on the topic question or essay question may be more beneficial. For this, you may need a writing instructor or English teacher to give in-person feedback in these earlier stages.

So how should you use Grammarly? To use Grammarly efficiently as an English learner you should consider it a final step in your writing process. Copy your text into the platform to do a final edit. But, always attempt to edit your own writing first as we discussed earlier in this post.

As an added bonus, the website has a very useful and frequently updated blog that covers various topics related to writing and grammar, as well as work and careers.

Ernest Hemingway was an American author known for his simple and direct writing style. He wrote with limited adverbs and in short sentences.

This is a great style to practice especially for business English and professional English purposes because it’s important to be able to explain complex ideas in a basic manner.

That’s the central idea behind the Hemingway editor.

The Hemingway App website works in a similar way to the previously mentioned Grammarly app: It offers suggestions to help improve your writing.

That being said, there are some key differences.

The Hemingway App is best used for overall “stylistic” purposes. It helps your writing feel less complex and cluttered. It’s also important to note that it doesn’t correct spelling.

To use the website, copy your text and paste it into the editor. The editor will then provide you with a score and suggestions on how to improve the clarity of the writing, active/passive voice , how hard or easy your writing is to read and more. Everything is color-coded so you can easily see what needs to be updated.

You can make edits to your text right on the website and watch your readability score increase as you do! The more you use this website, the more aware you’ll become of the clarity and simplicity of your writing as you write.

It’s worth noting that this isn’t the only way to write—you may prefer to write with more flowing, flowery language, and that’s absolutely something you can do! The Hemingway App is a good option for you, though, if your writing is difficult for others to understand, more lengthy than you’d like or if you just want to write in a simpler style.

The app is free however you can choose for a paid service that offers additional features.

Even native speakers will re-read their own writing several times to not only check for grammar mistakes but also to gain an understanding of how it will be read by others.

If you’re interested in discovering additional ways to express what you wish to write, then Wordtune is a good place to start.

On Wordtune, there are multiple editing options to suit different needs. For example, you could have your piece of writing rewritten, check its grammar, change its formality as well as make it more concise or longer.

You can even use Wordtune to find synonyms, which will not only allow you to improve your writing but also help you expand your English vocabulary .

To analyze your writing on Wordtune, simply copy and paste your text into the editor. I’d recommend starting off with shorter texts or sentences so you can focus on the variety of suggestions that this website will provide you with. You’ll be able to compare different options and see a deeper analysis of your writing.

Like Wordtune, Ginger also offers grammar checks and can rephrase your writing, providing you with various options to choose from.

Want to add variety to your writing or simply grow your vocabulary? As well as rephrasing and correcting sentences , on Ginger, you can simply click on a word to find more synonyms . This is a great way to learn new words and see how they can be used in your own writing.

One of my favorite features that I’d recommend to all English learners and even native speakers who want to improve their writing is Ginger’s “Writing Center,” where you’ll find a ton of informative guides about different types of writing, from resumes and cover letters to business vocabulary and letters .

Mignon Fogarty, also known as the Grammar Girl, is the founder of the blog and website “Quick and Dirty Tips.” She’s an award-winning writer and podcast host, and has a number of other accolades.

And there’s a good reason for that: Her webpage is a goldmine (full of useful information) of grammar advice and writing tips for native and non-native speakers alike!

You can find articles that cover basic grammar rules all the way up to more specific issues such as when to use specific words, like in the case of historic vs historical .

There are two ways that you can make the most of this resource as an English learner. The first is to search for a specific answer to a question that you have in mind. Grammar Girl has the answers to many of the most common grammar questions. If you have a question about how to use a word or how to apply a grammar rule, there’s a good chance it’s been covered on the website.

The second (which is my favorite) is to simply scroll through the website, diving deep into all the interesting and funny articles. You’ll learn the interesting history of some words, incredible tips and of course plenty of writing-related advice.

It’s a great way to learn while having fun!

Udemy is an online education platform. It offers courses in pretty much anything! That means that there’s a full range of English writing courses for you to choose from, ranging in price, level of difficulty and area of specialty.

This is the perfect resource for a person who’s new to writing in English or for a learner who wants to focus on a particular type of writing, like creative or business writing. Basically, you’ll be able to find something valuable to your writing goals at any level!

Among the courses covered are specific courses such as one on formal email writing .

To make the most of this resource, it’s very important that you carefully select the right course for your goals. This means reading the reviews, watching the course preview and reading any feedback or notes left by people who have previously taken the course.

Make sure you keep up to date with the classes and prepare materials on a schedule! Since these are mostly courses that allow you to go at your own pace, you’ll have to keep yourself on track.

Coursera is another online education platform that’s similar to Udemy and offers courses on specific topics. This means you’ll be able to find many courses offered on different styles of writing in English.

Plus, there’s an extra benefit to using Coursera: The courses come from authorized universities and institutions. As a result, many of the courses are more academic and similar to something you’d find in an actual college course. By taking one of these courses, you’ll be getting expert advice for much cheaper than the cost of a university class, or even for free!

Coursera suits learners looking to achieve a professional level of writing . In fact, if you scroll through the offerings, you’ll notice that many (but not all) of the courses on English are business or professionally focused .

If you’re learning English for business, you might find it useful to take this course on “Better Business Writing in English” from the Georgia Institute of Technology. Or, if you’re just trying to improve your overall writing skills, this course on grammar and punctuation from the University of California, Irvine can help you out.

You also have the option of paying to receive a certificate of completion at the end of the course. This makes Coursera an excellent option if you’d like to put your English studies on your resume!

Cambridge English is considered the “gold star” of English learning and teaching. In fact, the Cambridge Exams are known around the world and are very sought after by English learners. Over five million Cambridge English exams are taken every year!

Because of this, the resources that they produce are highly professional and educational, like their great service called “Write and Improve.”

Once you set up your profile and current writing level, you’ll be taken to your dashboard. Here, you can start writing either in a “free writing style” or with a given topic. Once you’ve completed your writing, it’s assessed and leveled based on your spelling, grammar and vocabulary. It’s then checked against the Common European Framework Reference for Languages (CEFR) .

“Write & Improve” is a great resource to give you an idea of what level your current writing skills are, as well as to discover some areas for improvement. This is also a very useful resource for anyone planning to take an accredited English exam, especially if you’ll be taking a Cambridge exam.

As an added benefit, you can set goals with this resource and take comfort in knowing that the feedback is based on the Cambridge system, including having your spelling checked against the Cambridge Dictionary .

Project Gutenberg is an open-source (legally allowed to be shared for free) library with over 70,000 titles! Generally, the titles you’ll find here are a bit old, as many of the books are no longer protected by copyright.

You may be wondering how exactly an online library can help perfect your writing skills. Well, by allowing you to read great books for free, of course!

But you can’t just read—to really learn from this resource, you need to read actively and closely. Take your time and read passages slowly. Write notes in a journal so you can get a better feel for the language. Take note of new phrases and words, unfamiliar grammar structures and anything else that stands out to you.

Start by scrolling through the top 100 . Most of these books are still very relevant today in English culture! Project Gutenberg is an excellent introduction to the long history of English writing and culture.

It’s important to note that many of these books may use older or more traditional types of English, so be sure to check words and grammar rules for their modern usage.

The British Council is another organization that focuses on the English language and culture. Like Cambridge English, the British Council offers services related to English learning and exam preparation.

Their writing section is a great mix of English writing resources and activities. These would suit any type of learner since they’re clearly arranged by difficulty and are designed for self-study. This means you can set your own schedule and focus on areas of interest that are relevant to you.

To begin, choose your appropriate level. To really make the most of the resource, you should be completing all the activities as well as interacting in the comments section. You may find some tips and feedback you wouldn’t otherwise get!

If you like the free content, there’s an option to continue with a paid course. This is a good choice for anyone who wants to prepare for an exam or get a more structured learning experience.

“I don’t want to write today.”

“I don’t know what to write about!”

“It’s too late, I’ll write tomorrow.”

Do you ever find yourself making excuses like these? I know I do! It isn’t always easy to get yourself to sit down and write.

This is where the psychology of forming a habit is so important.

So far we’ve looked at resources that help our skills or give us pointers for our English writing capabilities.

But what about the act of writing, itself? Forget complex grammar and spelling issues. Sometimes, sitting down and practicing writing is the hardest part of all!

750 Words tracks your writing and encourages you to write every day. The goal of the website is to get you to write 750 words—about three pages worth of writing—per day.

In addition to being a minimal and beautifully designed writing program, 750 Words provides feedback on the time you’ve spent writing, the number of words you wrote and the language you used. It also gives you a report on your writing output (how much you achieve).

There’s a big focus on habit building on the platform, which is an often forgotten but very important step! It can take anywhere from 18-254 days to form a habit, and 750 Words provides the motivation to write every day.

This is a “free-writing” or journaling website, which means you should be writing without any goal or task in mind. If you find yourself struggling to think of something to write about, Journal Buddies has a great list of 49 writing prompts for English learners.

750 Words doesn’t check your spelling or grammar, so you can use it with some of the other resources in this list, like Grammarly.

To make the most of these writing resources, there are a couple of things you can do. First, you should be consistent with your writing—that is, do it regularly. This means that you should be writing every day . You can also plan out your schedule to include writing as part of your daily tasks.

You should also consider joining a community or writing club. This can either be online or an in-person writing club.

Writing clubs are an excellent way to motivate yourself as well as introduce yourself to new ideas. Best of all, they’re the perfect support for writing resources. They offer the opportunity to expand and grow your skills in a helpful environment. You can ask questions, request feedback or even seek advice about particular websites that other writers use.

You should also be using resources that actually help you to develop your English writing skills. This is a very important step. You need to think of online writing websites as a way to improve your writing quality and your skill. But it should always start with you! For example, if you’re at a beginner level, then a resource that automatically corrects your spelling isn’t going to help you learn much, since you need to learn how to fix errors on your own before using an app.

On that note, learn how to edit your own writing. Editing—or looking at your writing for mistakes and correcting errors—is a critical step in the writing process. After you complete your work, take a step back. This means you need to leave your work for a day or two before reading it over. Then, you can look for mistakes with a fresh look. Read your writing, keeping an eye out for errors like incorrect spelling, punctuation mistakes or poor grammar.

If you’re a more advanced writer, you can also consider changes to the voice such as active and passive sentences and the structure. Learning how to edit your writing is one of the best steps you can take toward improving your writing proficiency.

On top of writing websites, expanding your English vocabulary and immersing yourself in a lot of good writing will help a lot. If your English is more advanced, books are a great choice, along with popular publications like Forbes , Vanity Fair , and National Geographic .

You can also learn more new words and colorful expressions through other types of English media. For instance, FluentU , a language learning website and app, allows you to pick up new vocabulary naturally through English videos.

Being able to write in English is a gateway to many incredible things, whether you’re working toward a personal goal to be more creative or a global skill for business! With these 11 incredible English writing websites, you’ll soon be able to develop this skill and write in English without fear!

If you like learning English through movies and online media, you should also check out FluentU. FluentU lets you learn English from popular talk shows, catchy music videos and funny commercials , as you can see here:

If you want to watch it, the FluentU app has probably got it.

The FluentU app and website makes it really easy to watch English videos. There are captions that are interactive. That means you can tap on any word to see an image, definition, and useful examples.

learn-english-with-subtitled-television-show-clips

FluentU lets you learn engaging content with world famous celebrities.

For example, when you tap on the word "searching," you see this:

learn-conversational-english-with-interactive-captioned-dialogue

FluentU lets you tap to look up any word.

Learn all the vocabulary in any video with quizzes. Swipe left or right to see more examples for the word you’re learning.

FluentU helps you learn fast with useful questions and multiple examples. Learn more.

The best part? FluentU remembers the vocabulary that you’re learning. It gives you extra practice with difficult words—and reminds you when it’s time to review what you’ve learned. You have a truly personalized experience.

Start using the FluentU website on your computer or tablet or, better yet, download the FluentU app from the iTunes or Google Play store. Click here to take advantage of our current sale! (Expires at the end of this month.)

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Travel & Adventure

The book by patrick symmes, shipping out by david foster wallace, death of an innocent by jon krakauer, the place to disappear by susan orlean, trapped by aron ralston, 75 more great travel articles, words and writing, on keeping a notebook by joan didion, autobiographical notes by james baldwin, how to talk about books you haven't read by pierre bayard, where do you get your ideas by neil gaiman, everything you need to know about writing by stephen king, 20 more great essays about writing, short memoirs, goodbye to all that by joan didion, seeing by annie dillard, explicit violence by lidia yuknavitch, these precious days by ann patchett, 100 more short memoirs, tennis, trigonometry, tornadoes by david foster wallace, losing religion and finding ecstasy in houston by jia tolentino, a brief history of forever by tavi gevinson, 50 more great articles about growing up, the female body by margaret atwood, the tyranny of the ideal woman by jia tolentino, grand unified theory of female pain by leslie jamison, 50 more great articles about women, revelations about sex by alain de botton, safe-sex lies by meghan daum, my life as a sex object by jessica valenti, sex is a coping mechanism by jill neimark, 50 more great articles about sex.

The Women's Movement by Joan Didion

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Social Media

The machine always wins by richard seymour, my instagram by dayna tortorici, why the past 10 years of american life have been uniquely stupid by jonathan haidt, 15 more articles about social media, m by john sack, blackhawk down by mark bowden, hiroshima by john hersey, the ai-powered, totally autonomous future of war is here by will knight, 35 more great articles about war, the hinge of history by joan didion, how america lost its mind by kurt andersen, the problem with facts by tim harford, constant anxiety won't save the world by julie beck, 75 more great articles about politics, crime & punishment, the caging of america by adam gopnik, the crooked ladder by malcolm gladwell, cruel and unusual punishment by matt taibbi, 20 more great articles about crime, the body in room 348 by mark bowden, the art of the steal by joshua bearman, true crime by david grann, the crypto trap by andy greenberg, 35 more great true crime stories, does it help to know history by adam gopnik, 1491 by charles c. mann, a history of violence by steven pinker, the worst mistake in history by j. diamond, 25 more great articles about history, notes of a native son by james baldwin, how to slowly kill yourself and others in america by kiese laymon, magic actions by tobi haslett, 30 more great essays about race, cities and ambition by paul graham, here is new york by e. b. white, 25 more great articles about cities, we are all confident idiots by david dunning, fantastic beasts and how to rank them by kathryn schulz, the problem with p-values by david colquhoun, what is the monkeysphere by david wong, 100 more great psychology articles, love & relationships, love by lauren slater, masters of love by emily esfahani smith, this is emo by chuck klosterman, 50 more great articles about relationships, what makes us happy by joshua shenk, social connection makes a better brain by emily esfahani smith, the real roots of midlife crisis by jonathan rauch, 20 more great articles about happiness, success & failure, you can do it, baby by leslie garrett, what drives success by amy chua and jed rubenfeld, the fringe benefits of failure, and the importance of imagination by j.k. rowling, 10 more great articles about success, health & medicine, somewhere worse by jia tolentino, race to the vaccine by david heath and gus garcia-roberts, an epidemic of fear by amy wallace the score by atul gawande, 50 more great articles about health, mental health, darkness visible by william styron, the epidemic of mental illness by marcia angell, surviving anxiety by scott stossel, 50 more great articles about mental health, the moral instinct by steven pinker, not nothing by stephen cave, the greatest good by derek thompson, 15 more great articles about ethics, getting in by malcolm gladwell, learning by degrees by rebecca mead, the end of the english major by nathan heller, 20 more great articles about education, the string theory by david foster wallace, the istanbul derby by spencer hall, the kentucky derby is decadent and depraved by hunter s. thompson, 50 more great sports articles, why does music make us feel good by philip ball, one more time by elizabeth margulis, how to be a rock critic by lester bangs, 50 more great music articles, the arts & culture, inhaling the spore by lawrence weschler, death by harry potter by chuck klosterman, a one-man art market by bryan aappleyard, welcome to airspace by kyle chayka, 35 more great articles about the arts, fx porn by david foster wallace, flick chicks by mindy kaling, the movie set that ate itself by michael idov, 15 more great articles about movies, the last meal by michael paterniti, if you knew sushi by nick tosches, consider the lobster by david foster wallace, 50 more great articles about food.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson

The last american hero is junior johnson. yes by tom wolfe, masters of the universe go to camp by philip weiss, what is glitter by caity weaver.

About The Electric Typewriter We search the net to bring you the best nonfiction, articles, essays and journalism

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80 Best Magazines & Websites That Publish Personal Essays

Wouldn’t it be great to find a whole list of magazines that publish personal essays, and even pay you for the privilege?

Well, you’re in luck because you’ve just found a list of magazines that accept essay submissions around pop culture, personal finance, personal stories, and many other topics. If you’re passionate about crafting personal essays and your work typically falls within a range of 600 to 10,000 words, consider submitting your essays to the organizations listed below. They generally offer compensation of $50-$250 for each accepted essay. After this guide, you may also want to check my list of the best essays of all time .

Here are the top magazines and publications that publish thought-provoking essays:

1. the new york times – modern love.

“Modern Love” accepts essay submissions via email at [email protected] with the essay subject or potential title as the email subject line. Submissions should be original, true stories between 1,500 and 1,700 words, sent both as an attached Microsoft Word-compatible document and pasted into the body of the email. The team collaborates with writers on editing, and authors are compensated for published work. Submission info .

2. The New York Times – Opinion Essays

To submit an essay to this publication, fill out the provided submission form with the essay and a brief explanation of your professional or personal connection to its argument or idea. The essay should include sources for key assertions (either as hyperlinks or parenthetical citations). Although all submissions are reviewed, the publication may not be able to respond individually due to the high volume of entries. If there’s no response within three business days, authors are free to submit their work elsewhere. Submission info .

3. Dame Magazine

DAME is a women’s magazine that prioritizes accessible and intersectional journalism that dives into context rather than breaking news. Their stories are unexpected, emotional, straightforward, illuminating, and focused on people rather than policy. They aim to reveal new or surprising information, provoke action or empathy, simplify complex issues, introduce fresh ideas, and foreground the people most affected by discussed topics. Submission info .

4. The New Yorker

The New Yorker welcomes letters to the editor sent to [email protected] and includes your postal address and phone number. For fiction submissions, send your work as a PDF to [email protected] or mail it to their New York address. They review all submissions within ninety days and will only contact you if they decide to publish your work. Submission info .

5. The Atlantic

The Atlantic is keen on high-quality nonfiction, fiction, and poetry. Familiarity with their past publications can guide your submission. All manuscripts should be submitted as a Word document or PDF. They only respond if they’re interested in discussing your submission further. Separate submission channels exist for fiction and poetry. Submission info .

6. The Globe and Mail

The Globe and Mail welcomes your original experiences, viewpoints, and unique perspectives for your daily first-person essay. A good essay should have an original voice, an unexpected view, humor, vivid details, and anecdotes that illuminate a wider theme. While a successful essay could be funny, surprising, touching, or enlightening, it should always be personal and truthful, rather than political or fictional. Submission info .

7. The Guardian

To contribute to this publication, you should identify the most relevant section and contact the commissioning editor with a brief outline of your idea. You may be invited to submit your work speculatively, meaning payment will only be provided if your contribution is published. It’s important to note that your contribution should be sent electronically and will be published under standard copyright terms with payment at normal rates unless agreed otherwise before publication. Submission info .

8. Los Angeles Times

The Los Angeles Times is open to opinion articles on any subject, with most published pieces being about 750 words long. Submissions must be exclusive to them and not published elsewhere, including personal blogs or social media. Full drafts of articles are required for consideration and should include the author’s name, the topic, the full text, a short author biography, and contact information. Submission info .

9. The Sun Magazine

The Sun publishes personal essays, short stories, and poems from both established and emerging writers globally, particularly encouraging submissions from underrepresented perspectives. Their contributors’ work often garners recognition in prestigious anthologies and prizes. The Sun seeks personal essays that are deeply reflective, celebrating hard-won victories or exploring big mistakes, aiming to make newsworthy events feel intimate and wrestle with complex questions. Submission info .

Slate invites pitches that are fresh, and original, and propose strong arguments. They appreciate ideas that challenge conventional wisdom and encourage you to clearly articulate the insights your reporting can uncover. A concise pitch is preferred, even if a full draft is already written. You should include a short bio and any relevant published work. They advise waiting a week before pitching to other publications, and if an editor passes, refrain from sending it to another editor at Slate. Submission info .

VICE is primarily interested in mid-length original reports, reported essays, narrative features, and service journalism related to contemporary living and interpersonal relationships. They welcome stories informed by personal experiences and insight but advise writers to consider what makes their story unique, why they’re the right person to tell it, and why it should be on VICE. While all stories don’t need to be tied to current events, a timely element can distinguish a pitch. They also accept quick-turnaround blogs and longer features. Submission info .

12. Vox Culture

Vox Culture seeks to provide readers with context and analysis for understanding current entertainment trends. They are interested in pitches that answer significant questions about major movies, TV shows, music artists, internet culture, fame, and women’s issues in the entertainment business. Notably, they are not interested in personal essays or celebrity interviews. Past successful stories have ranged from exploring Disney’s move away from traditional villains to analyzing historical inaccuracies in popular shows. They accept story pitches ranging between 1,000 and 2,500 words. Submission info .

Aeon, a unique digital magazine since 2012, is known for publishing profound and provocative ideas addressing big questions. Their signature format is the Essay, a deep dive into a topic, usually between 2,500-5,000 words, approached from a unique angle and written with clarity to engage curious and intelligent general readers. Aeon’s contributors are primarily academic experts, but they also welcome those with significant professional or practical expertise in various fields. Submission info .

14. BuzzFeed Reader

This platform welcomes freelance pitches on cultural criticism, focusing on current or timeless topics in various categories like books, technology, sports, etc. Essays should offer a unique perspective on how these subjects reflect our society. The content must be relevant, advance ongoing dialogues, and add value to the existing discourse. Submission info .

15. The Boston Globe

Boston Globe Ideas welcomes a variety of content including op-eds, reported stories, book excerpts, first-person essays, and Q&A features. Submissions should be sent directly, not as pitches. Please include your submission in the body of the email, not as an attachment. Briefly explain why you’re uniquely qualified to write this piece. Ensure your submission hasn’t been published or under review elsewhere. Submissions page .

16. The Bold Italic

This platform is actively seeking submissions in the genre of personal narrative essays. These pieces can encompass a broad range of experiences from the hilariously light-hearted to deeply poignant, encapsulating the vibrant and diverse experiences of living in your community. Submission info .

Before pitching to a Medium Publication, thoroughly understand its unique style by reviewing published content and submission guidelines. This ensures your work aligns with their preferences. With numerous Medium Publications available, persist in your submissions until you find a fitting outlet. Submission info .

18. Refinery29

Refinery29 Australia is committed to empowering women and underrepresented groups, with a particular focus on Australian women and trans and gender-diverse individuals, primarily Gen-Z and millennials. We publish a diverse array of content, from timely personal essays to reports on race, reproductive rights, and pop culture, all with a distinctly local perspective. They aim to shed light on the world around us, and highly value pieces that capture the unique Australian experience, be it in subject matter or authorial voice. Submission info .

ELLE’s annual talent competition is back for, seeking out the next superstar in writing. The winner will have their 500-word piece, inspired by the hashtag #RelationshipGoals and focusing on a significant relationship in their life. Submission info .

20. Cosmopolitan

Cosmopolitan is looking for first-person features that cover all aspects of beauty. This can include writing personal essays or narratives about your struggles with adult acne, your journey to an all-natural beauty routine, or other unique beauty experiences. We are also open to opinion pieces about beauty trends or movements that resonate with you. Submission info .

Bustle encourages freelance pitches across different verticals such as Lifestyle, Books, News and politics, Fashion and beauty, and Entertainment. We value pitches that are brief yet comprehensive, including a sample headline, a 2-3 sentence description of the piece, your plan for photos, sources you have access to, your clips if you haven’t written for us before, and your standard rate. Make sure to understand what we’re looking for and convey your story idea clearly and professionally. Submission info .

22. The Walrus

The Walrus seeks short essays (up to 1,200 words) that are timely, focused, and sourced from Canada and globally. These can be reported narratives, memoirs, or mini-features on specific topics. Each essay should exhibit a distinct argument, a strong writing voice, and present an original and significant viewpoint. Writers new to The Walrus or those without long-form journalism experience are particularly encouraged to contribute to this section. Submission info .

23. Autostraddle

Autostraddle welcomes pitches, works in progress, and completed submissions. Any issues with the submission form should be emailed to Laneia Jones with the subject line “SUBMISSION ERROR”. Questions about the submission process can be directed to Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya with “SUBMISSION PROCESS” in the subject line. Please note that pitches or submissions sent via email will not be accepted. Submission info .

24. Narratively

Narratively focuses on original and untold human stories, welcoming pitches and completed submissions from diverse voices. They use Submittable for managing submissions. To better understand what they’re looking for in new writers, contributors can review their guidelines, and the best pitches they’ve received, and ask questions to their editors about how to pitch. Submission info .

25. Catapult

Catapult offers a regularly updated list of submission and freelancing opportunities. Some current options include Black Fox Literary Magazine, open for fiction submissions; Carina Press, seeking romance manuscripts; Elegant Literature, welcoming submissions for its contest; Inkspell Publishing, looking for romance manuscripts; Interlude Press, seeking original novels featuring diverse casts; and Intrepid Times, accepting stories about romance while traveling. Submission info .

26. Jezebel

At Jezebel, the high volume of daily emails (over 500), including tips and questions from readers, makes it impossible to respond to all of them, even though they are all read and appreciated. Their primary job involves posting 60+ items a day, and due to workload constraints, they may not always be able to reply to your email. Submission info .

27. Bitch Media

Bitch Media seeks pitches offering feminist analysis of culture, covering a wide array of topics including social trends, politics, science, health, life aspects, and popular culture phenomena. They publish critical essays, reported features, interviews, reviews, and analyses. First-person essays should balance personal perspectives with larger themes. Both finished work and query letters are welcome. However, due to the volume of submissions, they cannot guarantee a response or that every pitch will be read. Submission info .

28. Broadview

Broadview magazine prefers pitches from professional writers for unique, audience-focused stories. While unsolicited articles may be accepted, the initial idea pitch is recommended. Responses to each pitch are not guaranteed due to high submission volumes. Submission info .

29. Briarpatch Magazine

Briarpatch Magazine accepts pitches on a variety of political and social issues, valuing stories from diverse voices. They seek well-researched, fact-backed pieces aimed at a non-specialist, progressive audience. They recommend writers to first pitch their ideas, including contact info, estimated word count, recent publications, and a short writing sample. The magazine aims to respond within one to two weeks after the pitch deadline for each issue. Submission info .

30. Maisonneuve

Maisonneuve Magazine welcomes non-fiction writing submissions in various forms (reporting, essays, memoirs, humor, reviews) and visual art (illustration, photography, comics). They do not accept fiction, poetry, or previously published work. They prefer well-developed, well-researched pitches, but also accept polished drafts if the writer is open to edits. To understand what the magazine is looking for, it’s recommended to read some recent issues or check their website. Submission info .

31. Room Magazine

Room Magazine seeks original fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction, and art from individuals of marginalized genders, including women (cisgender and transgender), transgender men, Two-Spirit, and nonbinary people. Simultaneous submissions are welcome, and submissions can be made through Submittable. Submission info .

32. Hazlitt

Hazlitt is currently not accepting submissions but it might reopen soon. They seek original journalism, investigative features, international reporting, profiles, essays, and humor pieces, but they are not considering unsolicited fiction. Pitches with proposed word counts are preferred, and they have a section called “Hazlitt Firsts” for reviews of experiencing mundane things for the first time as adults. Submission info .

33. This Magazine

This Magazine seeks pitches for their annual Culture Issue with a DIY theme, open to various topics related to DIY spirit. They publish Canadian residents only and prefer queries over already completed essays or manuscripts. They look for unique stories with a social justice angle, and pitches should include reasons for telling the story, relevant sources, and potential takeaways for readers. Submission info .

34. Geist Magazine

Geist magazine seeks submissions with a literary focus, including short non-fiction for the Notes & Dispatches section (around 800-1200 words) with a sense of place, historical narrative, humor, and personal essays on art, music, and culture. They encourage submissions from diverse writers and will pay writers $300-500 for accepted pieces. Submission info .

35. Discover Magazine

Discover magazine seeks pitches from freelance writers for science-related stories that enlighten and excite readers, with a conversational tone and high reader interest. Pitch one idea per email, mentioning the newness of the science and specific studies and researchers to be cited. Include your science-writing credentials and best clips in the pitch and send them to [email protected]. Payment starts at $1/word for print and typically $300/story for web, with rights purchased for both. Submission info .

36. Eater Voices

Eater Voices accepts personal essays from chefs, restaurateurs, writers, and industry insiders about the food world. To pitch, email a brief explanation of the topic and why you are the right person to write about it to [email protected]. Submission info .

37. The Temper

The Temper is an online publication focused on sobriety, addiction, and recovery, challenging drinking culture. They seek diverse and intersectional stories written through the lens of addiction, covering various topics like sex, food, relationships, and more. Submissions are currently closed, but they are especially interested in amplifying voices from marginalized and underrepresented groups. Submission info .

38. Chatelaine

Chatelaine is a prominent Canadian women’s magazine covering health, current events, food, social issues, decor, fashion, and beauty. To pitch, read the magazine first, and submit a one-page query letter explaining the idea’s fit for the magazine, section, and format. They prefer email submissions with at least two previously published writing samples, and response time may take six to eight weeks. Submission info .

39. Conde Nast Traveler

Condé Nast Traveler seeks pitches for reported and personal travel stories with inclusive coverage, including BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and disabled communities. Focus on stories and angles rather than destinations, check for previous coverage, and offer a fresh perspective. If pitching a personality, indicate exclusivity and access. Consider your expertise in telling stories, especially about marginalized communities, and disclose any sponsorships. Keep pitches brief, including a suggested headline, angle, sources, and why it’s timely. Responsible travel stories are prioritized during the pandemic. Submission info .

40. Boston Globe Ideas

Globe Ideas is dedicating an entire issue to young people’s voices and stories. Teens are invited to share their aspirations, concerns, and experiences about mental health, school, social media, and more, up to 700 words or through short notes, videos, or illustrations. This is a chance for teens to set the record straight and tell the world what matters most to them. Submission info .

41. Babbel Magazine

Babel welcomes submissions from all linguists, focusing on accessible and stimulating articles about language. Writers can submit feature articles or propose ideas for regular features, and guidelines for contributions are available for download. For those with ideas but not interested in writing, they can also suggest topics for articles through email. Submission info .

42. HuffPost Personal

HuffPost seeks to amplify voices from underrepresented communities, including BIPOC, LGBTQ, and people with disabilities. They accept freelance pitches on a wide range of topics, providing clear guidelines for submissions. They also encourage visual creatives to submit their work, and all published contributors are paid for their work. Please note that due to the volume of submissions, individual responses may not be possible. Submission info .

43. Adelaide Literary Magazine

Adelaide magazine accepts submissions in various categories, including fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, translations, book reviews, interviews, and art/photography. Fiction and nonfiction submissions have a size limit of 5,000 words, while book reviews have a limit of 2,000 words. They do not accept previously published work or simultaneous submissions. Artists retain all rights to their work, and upon publication, rights revert to the author/artist. Submission info .

44. bioStories

BioStories welcomes nonfiction prose submissions of 500 to 7500 words, with the typical piece being around 2500 words. Submit via email to [email protected], pasting the submission in the email body with the subject line “biostories submission” and your last name. Simultaneous submissions are accepted, but immediate notification is required if accepted elsewhere. Multiple submissions are allowed at a one-month interval, and the work must be previously unpublished in print and online. Noncompliant submissions will not receive a response. Submission info .

45. Quarter After Eight

Quarter After Eight welcomes innovative writing submissions in any genre from both new and established writers. To withdraw work, use the “withdraw” option on Submittable for the entire submission or the “note” function to specify which pieces to withdraw; do not email about withdrawals. Submission info .

46. The Rappahannock Review

The Rappahannock Review accepts original and innovative writing in various genres, including fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and audio pieces. They encourage experimentation and creativity, seeking enthralling voices and compelling narratives. Additionally, the magazine showcases a variety of visual artists and welcomes submissions for consideration in each new issue. Submission info .

Allure is seeking writers to contribute pieces that explore beauty, style, self-expression, and liberation. They are looking for writers with relevant credentials and experience in the field, and they offer compensation of $350 for reported stories and $300 for personal essays. Submission info .

48. MLA Style Center

The Modern Language Association is inviting students to submit research papers written in MLA style for consideration in their online collection “Writing with MLA Style.” Essays should be 2,000 to 3,000 words in length and must be written in English. Works-cited-list entries do not count toward the word limit. Submission info .

49. Marie Claire

Marie Claire magazine is dedicated to highlighting the diversity and depth of women’s experiences. They offer award-winning features, essays, and op-eds, as well as coverage of sustainable fashion, celebrity news, fashion trends, and beauty recommendations. Submission info .

SELF magazine is actively seeking new writers, particularly from marginalized communities, to contribute to their health and wellness content. They are interested in pitches that offer helpful insights on topics related to health, fitness, food, beauty, love, and lifestyle. The focus should be on improving personal or public health clearly and straightforwardly. Submission info .

51. Her Story

HerStry is a platform that focuses on the experiences of women-identifying persons, including cisgender women, transgender women, non-binary persons, and more. They accept personal essays that are true stories about the author, with a length between 500 to 3,000 words. They pay $10 for each published personal essay here, but there is a $3 submission fee (with limited free submission periods). Stories are read blind, and explicit or offensive content is not accepted. Submission info .

52. Griffith Review

Griffith Review accepts submissions based on specific themes for each edition. They welcome new and creative ideas, allowing writers to express their voices in essays, creative and narrative nonfiction-fiction, and analytical pieces. Submissions should generally range from 2,000 to 5,000 words, with up to four poems allowed on theme. Submission info .

53. Literary Review of Canada

The Literary Review of Canada welcomes prospective writers, photographers, and illustrators to submit specific review proposals, essay pitches, or general queries. They prefer to receive unsolicited review topics and essay ideas rather than completed work and do not accept simultaneous submissions. Submission info .

54. Harper’s Magazine

For Harper’s Magazine, nonfiction writers should send queries accompanied by a self-addressed, stamped envelope. Ideas for the Readings section can be sent to [email protected], but individual acknowledgment is not guaranteed due to volume. All submissions and queries must be sent by mail to their New York address. Submission info .

55. Virginia Quarterly Review

VQR only considers unpublished work, submitted online via Submittable. One prose piece and four poems are allowed per reading period, but multiple submissions in the same genre will be declined unread. Simultaneous submissions are permitted, but if accepted elsewhere, notify them immediately via Submittable. Submission info .

56. The New England Review

New England Review is open for submissions in all genres during specific periods. They accept fiction, poetry, nonfiction, dramatic writing, and translations. The magazine only considers previously unpublished work, and simultaneous submissions are allowed. They welcome submissions from writers of all backgrounds and encourage diverse perspectives. Submission info .

57. One Story

One Story seeks literary fiction between 3,000 and 8,000 words, any style, and subject. They pay $500 and provide 25 contributor copies for First Serial North American rights. Only unpublished material is accepted, except for stories published in print outside North America. Simultaneous submissions allowed; prompt withdrawals upon acceptance elsewhere. Accepts DOC, DOCX, PDF, and RTF files via Submittable. No comments on individual stories. No revisions of previously rejected work. Translations are accepted with proper attribution. No emailed or paper submissions, except for incarcerated individuals. Submission info .

58. The Threepenny Review

The Threepenny Review accepts submissions for fiction, poetry, travel essays, and Table Talk pieces. They pay $400 per story/article and $200 per poem, granting first serial rights and copyright reversion to the author. Mailed manuscripts require a self-addressed stamped envelope, while online submissions should be in Word format with a single document for prose or poetry. Submission info .

59. Zoetrope: All-Story

Zoetrope: All-Story is currently not accepting general submissions. They will announce when submissions reopen and update the guidelines accordingly. Submission info .

60. American Short Fiction

American Short Fiction accepts regular submissions of short fiction from September to December. The magazine publishes both established and new authors , and submissions must be original and previously unpublished. Manuscripts should be typed, double-spaced, and accompanied by the author’s contact information. Simultaneous submissions are allowed, but authors must withdraw their work if accepted elsewhere. Payment is competitive and upon publication, with all rights reverting to the author. American Short Fiction does not accept poetry, plays, nonfiction, or reviews. Submission info .

61. The Southern Review

The Southern Review accepts work during its submission period. They only consider unpublished pieces in English and accept simultaneous submissions. If your work is accepted elsewhere, promptly notify them via email with the subject line “withdrawal.” Do not submit work via email, as it will be discarded. They do not consider submissions from anyone currently or recently affiliated with Louisiana State University within the past four years. It is recommended to familiarize yourself with the journal’s aesthetic by subscribing before submitting your work. Submission info .

62. Boulevard Magazine

Boulevard seeks to publish exceptional fiction, poetry, and non-fiction from both experienced and emerging writers. They accept works of up to 8,000 words for prose and up to five poems of up to 200 lines. They do not consider genres like science fiction, erotica, horror, romance, or children’s stories. Payment for prose ranges from $100 to $300, while payment for poetry ranges from $50 to $250. Natural Bridge Online publication offers a flat rate of $50. Submission info .

63. The Cincinnati Review

The Cincinnati Review accepts submissions for its print journal during specific periods: September, December, and May. miCRo submissions are open almost year-round, except during the Robert and Adele Schiff Awards and backlogs. They welcome submissions from writers at any stage, except current/former University of Cincinnati affiliates. Simultaneous submissions are allowed, and response time is around six months. Payment is $25/page for prose, $30/page for poetry in print, and $25 for miCRo posts/features. Submission info .

64. The Antioch Review

The Antioch Review seeks nonfiction essays that appeal to educated citizens, covering various social science and humanities topics of current importance. They aim for interpretive essays that draw on scholarly materials and revive literary journalism. The best way to understand their preferences is to read previous issues and get a sense of their treatment, lengths, and subjects used in the publication. Submission info .

AGNI’s online Submission Manager is open from September 1st to midnight December 15th, and again from February 15th to midnight May 31st. Manuscripts can also be submitted by mail between September 1st and May 31st. AGNI considers prose in various genres, including personal essays, short stories, prose poems, and more. They do not publish academic essays or genre romance, horror, mystery, or science fiction. Simultaneous submissions are welcome, and sending through the online portal incurs a $3 fee, but regular mail submissions can be made to avoid the fee. Submission info .

66. Barrelhouse

Barrelhouse accepts unsolicited submissions for book reviews through their Submittable online submissions manager. They pay $50 to each contributor and accept simultaneous submissions. There is no maximum length, but most published pieces are shorter than 8,000 words. They only accept Word or rich-text (.rtf) files and prefer poetry to be submitted as a single document. Submissions for their print and online issues are currently closed, but book reviews are open. Response time is approximately six months. Submission info .

67. Tin House Online

Tin House is a good company that offers a two-day submission period three times a year for writers without a current agent and no previous book publication (chapbooks accepted). They accept fiction, literary nonfiction, and poetry, both in English and in translation (with formal permission). Completed drafts are required. They are particularly interested in engaging with writers from historically underrepresented communities. Submission info .

68. One Teen Story

One Teen Story publishes 3 stories annually and welcomes submissions from teen writers aged 13-19. They seek original, unpublished fiction across genres, focusing on the teen experience. Great short stories with compelling teen characters, strong writing, and a well-structured narrative are encouraged for submission to their contest. Submission info .

69. Bennington Review

Bennington Review accepts unsolicited submissions through Submittable during their reading periods in fall, winter, and spring. They seek innovative and impactful fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, film writing, and cross-genre work. Response times vary, but they aim to respond within five to eight months. Accepted contributors will receive payment ranging from $25 per poem to $250 for prose over six typeset pages, along with two copies of the published issue and a copy of the subsequent issue. Submission info .

70. Epoch Literary

Epoch Literary accepts poetry submissions of up to five poems, short fiction or essay submissions as a single piece or a suite of smaller pieces, and visual art and comics for the cover. They do not publish literary criticism or writing for children and young adults. Electronic submissions are open in August and January, with a $3 fee, part of which supports the Cornell Prison Education Program. Submission info .

71. The Gettysburg Review

The Gettysburg Review accepts poetry, fiction, essays, and essay reviews from September 1 to May 31, with a focus on quality writing. Full-color graphics submissions are accepted year-round. It’s recommended to read previous issues before submitting, and sample copies are available for purchase. The journal stays open during the summer for mailed submissions or those using Submittable and purchasing a subscription or the current issue. Submission info .

72. Alaska Quarterly Review

The publication accepts submissions of fiction, poetry, drama, literary nonfiction, and photo essays in traditional and experimental styles. Fiction can be short stories, novellas, or novel excerpts up to 70 pages, and poetry submissions can include up to 6 poems. They aim to respond within 4 to 12 weeks, but authors can inquire about their manuscript status after 4 weeks if needed. Submission info .

73. Colorado Review

Colorado Review only accepts submissions through its Submittable portal and no longer accepts paper submissions. They encourage writers to be familiar with their publication before submitting and provide sample copies and examples of recently published work on their website. They look for engaging stories with original characters, crisp language , and a provocative central problem or issue. Submission info .

74. The Georgia Review

The Georgia Review accepts submissions both online and by post, but not via email. Submissions are free for current subscribers. They do not consider unsolicited manuscripts between May 15 and August 15 and aim to respond within eight months. Previously published work will not be considered, and simultaneous submissions are allowed if noted in the cover letter. They offer different prizes for poetry and prose and accept submissions in fiction, poetry, essays, and book reviews. Submission info .

75. New Letters

New Letters accepts submissions year-round through Submittable, with a small fee waived for current subscribers. They welcome up to six poems, one chapbook, one piece of nonfiction, one short story (graphic or traditional), or one novella per submission. Simultaneous submissions are allowed if notified, and response time is approximately six months. They publish short stories up to 5,000 words, novellas up to 30,000 words, graphic short stories up to ten pages in color or black and white, and chapbooks up to 30 pages. Submission info .

76. Shenandoah

Submissions for comics will reopen soon. The Graybeal-Gowen Prize for Virginia Poets will be open for a limited time. Poetry submissions are considered in November and spring. Prose submissions will open soon. Short stories, creative nonfiction, and flash fiction are welcome. Editor Beth Staples looks for writing that challenges and offers diverse perspectives. Submission info .

77. TriQuarterly

TriQuarterly, the literary journal of Northwestern University, welcomes submissions in poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, video essays, short drama, and hybrid work from both established and emerging writers. They are especially interested in work that engages with global cultural and societal conversations. Submissions are accepted through Submittable, and they charge a small reading fee. Submission windows vary by genre. Submission info .

78. E-International Relations

E-International Relations invites current and former undergraduate and Master’s students to submit their highest-graded essays and dissertations for publication. They seek work that is of academic utility to other students and demonstrates engagement with the subject, using pertinent case studies/examples and engaging with complex literature and ideas. Submissions must meet specific entry criteria, including word count, language standards, and full bibliographic references. Submission info .

79. Longreads

Longreads publishes the best long-form nonfiction storytelling and accepts pitches for original work. They pay competitive rates and prefer pitches via email to [email protected]. Fiction is not accepted, and submissions using generative AI tools will be rejected. You can also nominate published stories by tweeting with the #longreads hashtag. Submission info .

80. Education Week

EdWeek welcomes submissions from various perspectives within the K-12 education community, including teachers, students, administrators, policymakers, and parents. Submissions should be concise, relevant to a national audience, and have a clear point of view backed by factual evidence. We value solution-oriented and practical pieces that offer best practices, policy recommendations, personal reflections and calls to action. Essays longer than 1,000 words or shorter than 600 words will not be considered. Please submit in Word format via email. Submission info .

If you want to get your essays published in a print magazine or an online publication, it’s time to approach the appropriate section editor or send your work via a submissions page. Even in a world where so much content is produced by AI, publications are still interested in receiving great writing written in a conversational tone. Just make sure to follow the guidelines (especially those around word count) and show off your flamboyant writing style in a prestigious online magazine. Next up, you might want to check a list of the top sites that will pay you to write, or my extensive list of publishing companies .

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The 50+ Best Writing Websites of 2024

Best writing websites for writing craft and inspiration

1. Almost an Author

2. Association of Writer & Writing Programs

3. Creativity Portal

4. Daily Writing Tips

6. Electric Literature

7. Fiction University

8. Helping Writers Become Authors

9. Insecure Writer's Support Group

10. Literary Hub

11. LitReactor

12. LitRejections

13. Live Write Thrive

14. NaNoWriMo

15. Now Novel

16. Positive Writer

17. ProWritingAid

18. She Writes

19. Well-Storied

20. The Write Practice

21. Writer’s Digest

22. Writer Unboxed

23. The Writing Cooperative

24. Writing.com

25. Catapult: Don’t Write Alone

26. Kirkus Review’s Writers’ Center

27. Writers Write

28. The Narrative Arc

Best writing websites in the publishing industry

29. Agent Query

30. The Creative Penn

31. Digital Pubbing

32. The Independent Publishing Magazine

33. Publishers Weekly

34. Publishing Perspectives

35. Query Shark

36. Writer Beware

37. The Darling Axe

Best writing websites for marketing and design

38. David Gaughran

39. Kikolani

40. Kindlepreneur

41. Storiad

42. Writers & Artists

43. Your Writer Platform

Best writing blogs by industry professionals

44. Goins, Writer

45. Jane Friedman

46. Nail Your Novel

47. Nathan Bransford

48. Rachelle Gardner

49. Kris Writes

50. The Marginalian

51. John August

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