Category: How To and Tips
Tips for Excellent Twists
Tips for Excellent Twists As readers, we crave that jaw-dropping feeling that leaves us slightly stunned, with the book open in our lap as we process the unexpected. Wouldn’t it be great if writing twists were as easy and enjoyable as reading them? To understand what makes an effective plot twist, you have to know […]
An Unconventional Form: On Writing The Fool and the Magician
An Unconventional Form: On Writing The Fool and the Magician By Angela Lam I wrote my first memoir about growing up Chinese American in a linear fashion, selecting that liminal space between childhood and adolescence to explore my relationship with my father, a man of many faces, a man who I sometimes hated and sometimes […]
The True to Life Inspirations for my Novel, Terra Nova
The True to Life Inspirations for my Novel, Terra Nova By Henriette Lazaridis My favorite stories in childhood were adventure tales like Incredible Journey or Banner in the Sky. I always liked to imagine myself as an explorer, climbing and hiking in my small world of woods and snow and swamps. When, at age seven, […]
On Writing The Girl
Since I left my corporate job in 2019 to pursue my writing dreams, a term has cropped up again and again that has always irked me when I’ve had to describe some of my short stories: the “unlikeable female character.” I know it started as a term to describe a female character who went against […]
How Conversations Inspire Writing
By Kelly Ohlert, author of To Get To The Other Side One gorgeous sunny day, I took a walk on my lunch break. Thanks to my incredibly low attention span, or rather, the low attention span of humans in general these days (thanks technology), I of course couldn’t just walk and enjoy the sunshine. I […]
How Living Abroad Informs and Inspires My Writing
How Living Abroad Informs and Inspires My Writing How do our life experiences shape our writing? And how does being a writer shape our life experiences? As an American expatriate preparing to launch my debut novel into the world after nearly three decades of living abroad, I often wonder which came first—whether my life abroad […]
From Science to Story: Nonfiction and Audience
From Science to Story: Nonfiction and Audience By Erica Hannickel My first book, a dissertation-turned-monograph about wine history, caught academic success, but contemporary wine industry people (from what I could judge) hated it. They seemed to think that I had a special axe to grind with wine. In truth, 19th century American historians had covered […]
On Writing Blurb Your Enthusiasm: An A-Z of Literary Persuasion
How do you sum up a whole book in a few words? Your book is nearly ready to enter the world. You’ve got a title, a cover, even some endorsements. Then, something you’d almost forgotten rears its head: the jacket copy (or, as we call it in Britain, the blurb). It’s often an afterthought in […]
EDITING TIPS FROM A FREELANCE EDITOR By Libby Sternberg
EDITING TIPS FROM A FREELANCE EDITOR By Libby Sternberg For many years, I’ve been a freelance editor at a major publishing house, editing romance novels and women’s fiction books. I started as a copy editor, checking for grammar, usage, and style, but now I’m a line—or developmental—editor, which means I check manuscripts for characterization, consistency, […]
Writing About Love
By Catherine Kullman Barbara Bos has suggested that I talk about ‘writing about love in your novels, what makes a good story in that respect?’ Love stories have been popular since people began telling stories and yet so many authors shy away from including a romantic arc in their novels. Why is this? In Have […]
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