Recently, someone asked me: What is required to make a book saleable? That is a rather large-in-scope question, and as such, I’m afraid my answer will be kinda vague. All the same, I thought it was worth taking the time to answer for everyone. 🙂 My super broad response is the: The most important thing […]
A while back, we did a QOTW on this topic, and yesterday, Billy did a great post discussing this from a romance standpoint. That said, I wanted to expand on it just a bit. First of all, telling is considered bad. Why? Because it packs less punch and ultimately doesn’t pull a reader in. For […]
Once upon a time, there was a really beautiful girl with LOTS of money. Her name was Susan, and she was super popular. Everyone wanted to be her, but she was nice, so everyone liked her too. She fell in love with a handsome Frenchman. Oh, and she could fly and turn invisible. Oh! And […]
Last Friday’s QOTW was about avoiding a contrived plot. At the time, I took this to mean a copy-cat plot, but the responses of Mandy and Julie made me see what the question could have meant: how do you avoid a forced plot — a turn of events in the story that doesn’t feel natural. […]
A common mistake writers make when editing their fiction is to start with the details first. They — er, we — adjust our words and our commas, our dialogue and our transitions, our passive voice and our adverbs. But if we start our revisions process here, we’re going to end up doing a lot of […]
To all my dear readers, I apologize for my blogging infrequency the last week. It’s probably going to continue for quite some time. But there is a reason — and it’s a valid reason! I’m revising Miss Eleanor Fitt and the Spirit-Hunters. My months of preparation are finally in the application stage.
Overall Rating: 5 out of 5 This book, by Donald Maass, is an extension of his Writing the Breakout Novel (WtBN). While some refer to WtBN as a “masters course in novel-writing”, WtBN Workbook takes it up a big notch to PhD-level. Maass doesn’t pretend that his method will be quick or easy – in fact, he emphasizes that it should take years to fully […]
Kim Sam-Soon: just another K-drama to add to my addiction list… K-drama, a.k.a. Korean soap operas, dramatic series, and romantic comedy series, are the only form of TV I’ve been watching of late… Pretty much since I moved to Germany since Arirang is one of our only channels in English (along with Russia Today, Aljazeera, […]
Overall Rating: 5 out of 5 This book, by Alicia Rasley, is one of my favorites for the planning stage. She makes you think to get your characters, conflicts, and plot in gear. This is definitely my Go-To-Book if I’m having trouble getting an outline or imagining where I want my story to go.
Today is the day Pearl Harbor was attacked in 1941. As such, the film Pearl Harbor was playing on TV over the weekend. We watched. Big mistake. The film is beyond horrible, but there are some great lessons to be learned from it–-lessons that are cross-denominational for film and writing. Here are a few: