How to Write and Publish Children's Books
Recently, I’ve been thinking about character driven story and the convergence of character and plot, which results in two types of stories. I see this in my work with editorial clients, but it can also extend to the offerings on the shelves. Sometimes there are stories about making fate, and sometimes there are stories about …
Continue reading “Character Driven Story: Making vs. Following Fate”
Writers, here’s a useful piece of advice: ditch the flowery writing during your action scenes. It’s self indulgent writing. This ties in with a note I give frequently, which is that good writing is about the balance of action and information. I’m also always telling writers about mimetic writing. The other day, with an editorial …
Continue reading “Ditch the Flowery Writing During Your Action Scenes”
I’ve been preaching all along that character motivation is crucial. Fiction characters need a clear sense of motivation and objective. Those twin drivers that are often part of the same coin. Character objective is, simply put, what a character wants to do, and motivation is why they want to do it. Each character should have these …
Continue reading “Positive and Negative Character Motivation”
In case anyone hasn’t gotten the memo yet, I want to run an idea by you: do not save the motivations of your antagonist until the very end. How has this usually happened in the past? Villain characters do all sorts of dastardly deeds, with seemingly no motivation in sight, until they have the hero …
Continue reading “Writing the Antagonist: Villain Characters and Their Motivations”
If you’ve read any of Donald Maass’ work, you may be familiar with the idea of beginning a book with “bridging conflict.” It’s a small bit of conflict before the inciting incident (the event that launches the plot) comes along. I want to talk about it in a little bit more detail. Beginning a Book: …
This first line comes by way of a freelance editorial client and is used with her permission. It’s not often that I showcase client work but I just had to talk about this line and what makes it such a grabber: If a tree falls in the woods…Zeke backed his bike into a stand of …
I’ve had a few writers recently come to me with questions similar to this one (summarized) regarding submitting to publishers: Help! I am simultaneously submitting to publishers and agents and I’ve noticed something strange. All of the agents seem to say complimentary things about the writing but reject my idea. Some have even said that …
Great manuscripts create their own writing voice, dictionaries, and lexicons, in a way. This is pretty commonplace in fantasy, where you rack up terms, place names, slang, and other words that are part of complex novel world building. Many fantasy series, in fact, have their own affiliated or “unofficial” encyclopedias published once the series runs out …
Writing for the reader by anticipating what readers want comes up when I’m discussing worldbuilding. For example, imagine a reader brand new to the fantasy world you’re creating. They’ve just dropped out of the sky and landed in the middle of it. They are fully immersed. (A good analogy for opening a book). What are …
Continue reading “Writing for the Reader by Anticipating Reader Wants”
I’ve written a lot about how to write dialogue, and now I want to introduce the idea of how to write a scene — specifically, keeping a scene going and picking the right time to interrupt the narrative flow. What’s the best time to insert information, description, dialogue tags, or action? (Read about types of dialogue tags …
Continue reading “How to Write a Scene: Picking The Right Time”