After two years of editing(!) Dani’s and my new book, Writing Young Adult Fiction, is about to be published. As one of our fans, I’d like to extend this special pre-publication offer to you: get the Kindle book for just $2.99, or get it for free when you purchase the paperback. My favorite part of the book…
Category: Writing Tips
Guarantee Your NaNoWriMo Success
What do Water for Elephants, The Night Circus, and Wool have in common? They all started as NaNoWriMo projects. Every year hundreds of thousands of authors around the globe participate in National Novel Writing month, or NaNoWriMo, with the goal of finishing a 50,000 words manuscript in just 30 days. But, only a fraction actually finish their novels. Writing…
Story Patterns
The original url for this post was writetabulous.com I recently attended a writer’s workshop that was hosted by a local writers group. The presenter, Judy Olsen, talked about story patterns and how learning and using one of five basic constructs could make a world of difference in your writing success. Since I have never structured a book…
How Much Detail? Getting Your Setting Right
by Jo Anne Fontanilla Every story takes place at same point or points in space and in time. It is incumbent upon the writer of fiction to “place” his story in space and time, as early as possible in his narrative, so that you will begin making the proper associations with the setting. The setting…
Setting
by: Jo Anne Fontanilla Every story takes place at same point or points in space and in time. It is incumbent upon the writer of fiction to “place” his story in space and time, as early as possible in his narrative, so that you will begin making the proper associations with the setting. The setting…
How Do You Punctuate Dialogue?
Dialogue can be a bit intimidating. All that punctuation. But it’s really not that complicated. The usual practice is to put dialogue in quotes and place an attribution after it, separated with a comma inside the closing quote mark. The attribution will not be capitalized, because it’s part of the same sentence: “Hello,” he said….
Settings – How Much Detail?
by: Jo Anne Fontanilla Every story takes place at same point or points in space and in time. It is incumbent upon the writer of fiction to “place” his story in space and time, as early as possible in his narrative, so that you will begin making the proper associations with the setting. The setting…
Make Your Writing More Active
Passive writing is boring. Here’s a simple change you can apply to every sentence you write to make it more interesting. Simply look for the word “was.” For example: The house I grew up in was in Los Angeles. It was a low, ranch style house with some modern touches. It was designed by my…
NaNoWriMo: Creating a Novel in 30 Days
November is National Novel Writing Month, when authors can sign up at http://nanowrimo.org and receive encouragement as they work to create a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. Hundreds of my students have successfully used NaNoWriMo to complete their first draft, so it’s a valuable tool. It sounds like a lot of work, but you…
Pros and Cons of Joining a Critique Group
Nearly all writers have a need for support and constructive criticism during the writing process. They want to make sure they’re on the right track, and that their results will meet the interests of agents, publishers or readers. The feedback provided by a group can help avoid time wasted in rewrites and editing. And positive…