by Jason Black
We’ve all heard to keep conflict in every scene, to maintain pacing and sustain our readers’ interest. However, the way a character conducts himself during a conflict is wildly indicative of what kind of person that character is. Every conflict revolves around a set of axes that govern the manner in which the conflict unfolds, and each axis presents characters with a choice: to take the high road, or the low. Those choices speak volumes about the people themselves.
Read Moreby Laura Munson
I’ve always felt that in order for writing to be pure, the writer must not consider the reader. It’s like high school. Be yourself no matter what the mean girls or the cute boys are going to say about it. Full self-expression is the key to the authentic life, especially the writing life, regardless of your critics. In other words, don’t make nice nice for nobody. Write what you have to write. With abandon. Full frontal. Even if it means your mother will blush.
Read Moreby Jason Black
We all want readers to feel positively towards our protagonists. Even if we’re writing an anti-hero, we still want readers to be rooting for that character. No matter what kind of protagonist you’ve got, that protagonist needs the reader’s sympathies in order for the book to work. There are two parts to this equation: the sympathy, and the hero. I’ll tackle heroism first.
Read Moreby Allison Leotta
George Pelecanos is an author at the top of his game. When he’s not writing bestselling crime novels, he’s creating some of America’s finest TV dramas: shows like “The Wire” and “Treme”. Stephen King called him “perhaps America’s greatest living crime writer”; Esquire anointed him “the poet laureate of D.C. crime fiction”; Dennis Lehane said, “The guy’s a national treasure.” In short, George Pelecanos is a literary rock star. So how can a new writer capture a little bit of that magic?
Read Moreby Cherie Tucker
Can you see what’s wrong with this sentence: They celebrated with expensive champagne because of the team winning the championship? If you went to parochial school and had the nuns, you know that you must always use the possessive with the gerund, but if you went to public school or were born after the Beatles’ 1968 hit, “Hey, Jude,” you may not even know what we’re talking about.
Read Moreby Joel Friedlander
Recently, I wrote here about using a “Hub and Outpost” approach to organize the social media marketing you're doing for your title. In that article, I looked at the three reasons I think a blog is by far the best tool to use as a Hub:
Read Moreby Erin Brown
You’ve slaved over your manuscript, day and night, year after year, decade after decade (okay, if that’s the case, perhaps you really should call it a day), and now it’s complete. It’s time to throw that baby out into the world, awaiting the ultimate embrace, all the while mentally preparing for the incredibly tough road through Rejection-ville. At this point, you should have a title for your precious tome. Trust me, Working Title, Untitled, and Suck It, Call It Whatever You Want are not viable options, as tempting as they are.
Read Moreby Jennifer Paros
Recently, my son was curious about Mike Tyson - the fact that Tyson had once bitten off part of someone’s ear. He started researching and was soon filled with details of a life story packed with dark and challenging moments. In reviewing what he’d learned with us, he announced that Mike Tyson had had “the worst life ever!” We agreed, in part, but also shared examples of others who had experienced beatings, rape, being sold into prostitution, concentration camps, schizophrenic breaks, and so on. And as he listened, following each description, he felt compelled to re-award The Worst Life Ever title time and again.
Read Moreby Laura Munson
It is my not-so-humble opinion that people say “what a small world” too much in not-so-small-worldish moments. For instance, if you were raised in Montana in a ski town of 2,300 people, and you travel to Seattle and you tell someone you’re from a ski town in Montana… and they say, “Whitefish?” and you say “Yes, in fact!” and they say, “Do you know Joe Schmo” and you say, “You mean Joe Schmo of the Schmo Schmos??? I used to DATE Joe Schmo. I almost MARRIED Joe Schmo!” well then… I’m not that impressed. There are exactly two ski towns in Montana, and both populations total about the size of a small liberal arts college.
Read Moreby Cherie Tucker
The first and last words of a title or a headline are capitalized. You know that. So is the first word after a dash or a colon. In between falls the shadow.
The articles, a, an, and the, are the easy ones. Unless they appear as the first word in your title, they are not capitalized. So it would be “The Three Bears” but “The Princess and the Pea.”
by Joel Friedlander
I look at a lot of books, books of all kinds from big publishers, small publishers, micro publishers and self-publishing authors.
One of the biggest problems I see in self-published books is a real misunderstanding of the role of the book cover. Because of this misunderstanding, do-it-yourself cover designers keep falling into the same traps.
Read Moreby Erin Brown
I work with incredibly talented writers on a consistent basis (one manuscript per week is scrabbled into tip-top shape, ready to ship out to agents and the literary elite), and every so often, I like to report on writing trends that have come across my desk.
I will compare this article to the very hip Twitter “trending,” but from the much less high-tech command center of Erin Edits (and much less hip; I’m typing right now wearing acid-washed parachute pants).
Read Moreby Jennifer Paros
In the first studio art class I took, my professor addressed the group’s anxiety over our upcoming art show in this way. She said:
“It’s not YOU hanging on the wall!
We laughed as she then pretended to hang herself like a piece of art, lifting her arms as though pinned to the wall while letting the rest of her body go limp. Yes, we laughed, but we were not soothed. That was a room full of raw egos all trying to figure out how they could protect themselves from the potential judgments of others.
Read Moreby Jason Black
It's true. From time to time, writers dismember their characters. I don't mean they do it with cleavers or chainsaws. I don't mean that this happens in the plot. They do it with grammar. When writers put a character’s parts in the grammatical subject position instead of the character herself, the character can come to exist not so much as her whole self but as a collection of individual body parts that happen to be arranged in a vaguely human manner.
Read Moreby Cherie Tucker
We all still remember those little mnemonic devices like “i before e except after c” that helped us over some of the tricky spots in our language. One I was never taught in grade school that would have helped immensely I learned only recently from a fifth-grader: FANBOYS. For, And, Nor, But, Or, Yet, So. This trick for remembering conjunctions, those words that join things, will help you when you ask yourself, do I need a comma here?
Read Moreby Joan Frank
On the occasion of the release of a new novel of mine, a writing student e-mailed to ask:
"Just wondering—if you have you done any readings so far, how have people interacted with you? I'm curious about authors' book signings or readings. Have you had any strange or funny experiences?"
I stared at her words. Strange or funny experiences. How could I answer in a way that wouldn't appall her?
Read Moreby Joel Friedlander
Most authors have gotten the message: you have to be marketing on social media sites if you want to make an impact and, eventually, sell your content.
Social media is indispensable to today's self-published artists, but it's good to remember that social media by itself is only one tactic in your overall marketing strategy. Just using social media is not a strategy in itself; it's a way to implement your basic marketing thrust.
Read Moreby Erin Brown
It’s easy for writers who are seeking publication to get into a rut. Hell, it’s easy for anyone to get into a rut. So for 2012, why not make a resolution to do some truly new things this New Year and see if some incredible changes come your way? Now I’m not talking about the boring, been-there-done-that stuff that everyone promises: go on a diet, exercise more, save money, stop stalking Ryan Gosling, learn how to boil water—you know, the basics.
Read Moreby Jennifer Paros
Recently I had the opportunity to watch the film Amadeus again and was struck by a scene in which the fictionalized character of Salieri, Amadeus’s greatest admirer and nemesis, is composing at the piano. He discovers a melody with which he is delighted, turns to the crucifix on the wall and thanks Jesus for the blessing he’s been given.
Read Moreby Cherie Tucker
There are times when you must not use a comma to separate words that need to be together. When you are writing about only two things, you don’t separate them from each other with a comma. You wouldn’t write that you liked dogs, and cats. Nor would you say you stopped, and looked. It’s easy to see how those commas are in the wrong place, just as it would be with I, love you. Sometimes it isn’t so obvious, however. One of the most unwanted commas comes before the and (or other conjunction) that joins two verbs that share the same subject.
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