Category: How To and Tips
From Headlines to Page: How I Transformed a National News Story into a Suspense Novel
By Regina Buttner Several years ago in my former hometown, the local media was abuzz with the tale of a young man whose parents were compelled to take the drastic step of evicting him from their suburban home for refusing to get a job and contribute to the household. It was a hard-to-believe story that […]
In-Limbo? Time to Write, Market, Grow!
By Donna Norman-Carbone The term in-limbo has some negative connotations. Merriam Webster Dictionary defines it as: a place or state of confinement or oblivion, one of uncertainty. The definition I associate with this term, however, is a transitional state or place. As a writer, I often find myself in a state of limbo whether I […]
Literary Tools for Next Level Writing By Jessica McCann
By Jessica McCann When a couple has been together 35 years, they develop a sort of code for sharing opinions. For example, when I tell my husband that his guy movie is “hilarious,” he knows I mean idiotic. (Think anything with Chevy Chase.) Likewise, when he remarks that a book is “literary” or “poignant,” what […]
Nancy Drew’s Newest Case: Not Just a Homemaker
By Paulette Brooks When I was in junior high, I had a girlfriend who owned the entire collection of the Nancy Drew Mystery series. Once a week we would hang out at her house after school and I would take home the next treasure, returning that book in seven days. Our fun ritual petered out […]
The Common Wages by Helen Winslow Black
By Helen Winslow Black I’m often asked how I go about writing the scenes in my books that are super tough. The ones that depict domestic violence, or navigate the emotional impact of discovering lies or secrets in a marriage. The answer is: With great delicacy. No matter what kind of situations I create, there […]
Adverbial Phrases ARE Adverbs Too
By Kathy Steinemann, author of The Writers Lexicon series Adverbs Are Disparaged by Many Editors and Writing Pundits In On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, Stephen King says: “I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs, and I will shout it from the rooftops. To put it another way, they’re like dandelions. […]
WILD TALES OF RABID RACCOONS AND PERSISTENT EDITORS
By Nancy Robards Thompson After years of journaling and writing for various Central Florida newspapers, I got serious about fiction in 1997. I quickly learned that writing a novel is a far cry from jotting down thoughts in a notebook or crafting a feature piece for the paper. Even though I had a lot to […]
On Writing A Deux, or How to Co-Author in a Cross-Country Friendship
by Carol Kerr and Linda Edelstein, co-authors of Not The Trip We Planned In the early 1980s, Linda Edelstein and I made a vow we would someday write a mystery together because it would be so much more fun than our dissertations. We were plowing through a psychology doctoral program at Northwestern. She was a […]
SMART TALK 101: HOW TO MAKE YOUR CHARACTERS BETTER CONVERSATIONALISTS
By Christina Hamlett For as many conversations as we chatter in or listen to every day, capturing that same rhythm and realism in a project for page, stage or screen is no small challenge. Too often the result is characters who (1) all talk in exactly the same voice, (2) talk more formally/rigidly/eloquently than normal […]
The Birth of a Thriller
By Iris Glazner Leigh There is no magic to writing a book. I can safely say that, as it took me eleven years of editing, rewriting, and sifting through rejections from publishers and agents to bring Liza’s Secrets from inception to publication. Throughout that process I remained determined to tell the story, a cautionary tale […]
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