Author Archive: Barbara Linn Probst
How The Piano Made Me A Better Writer
By Barbara Linn Probst The Sound Between the Notes is my second novel, but it’s also my first. I wrote it before I wrote Queen of the Owls, which was published a year ago, almost to the day … and rewrote it … and rewrote it … and rewrote it. The manuscript had even been […]
Finding Myself at The Great Big Ball of Hair in Jefferson, Texas
Barbara Linn Probst If you know what I’m referring to in the title of this piece, then you’ve been to the Pulpwood Queens’ Girlfriends Weekend, and you probably have a good idea what this essay will be about. But if you haven’t, and don’t, then read on. On second thought, read on either way. The […]
A Protagonist We Can Root For: Likable, Relatable, Neither, Or Both?
The question of likability, especially for female protagonists, is a topic that has sparked heated debate. Male protagonists have, traditionally, had an easier time of it. There have been rascals and rogues as well as knights; for every Atticus Finch, there’s a Rhett Butler. Yet female protagonists have had a more difficult history. Eccentricity is […]
Organic Coherence: Enhancing A Scene’s Effectiveness
How many times have we heard that every scene must have a goal, conflict, and pivot, concluding with an upward or downward shift in the protagonist’s journey? The formulation sounds right and, to an extent, it is. Like most generic advice, however, it’s too rigid and mechanical; something’s left out. That’s because we need to […]
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