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L asks: “Do you think an author’s ‘voice’ is easier to establish when a novel is written in 3rd POV omniscient than in 1st POV? Just asking because in the writing of my current WIP novel, I felt that I had to find and stick with the MC’s voice, and now in the polishing – [...]
I’m going to answer questions from a couple readers this week. If you have a question, email me and I’ll try to answer it, too. SarahJ asks: Could you give us an exercise for pacing for the whole novel? Pacing is a question of providing a combination of tension, reflection, rejoicing, sorrows across a novel [...]
Voice Friday: Search Your Voice for Words Words Voice Friday: Word Choices Voice Friday: Word Connotations Voice Friday: Word Sounds I’ve talked before about the importance of word choices in establishing voice. So, now, you’re editing your novel and you’ve decided that this word is the right diction, has the right connotations, and sounds right. [...]
Barriers to revision: Love. I love my work and don’t want to revise. Frankly, I see this one mentioned a lot, but most writers I know don’t have this attitude. Maybe beginners do, but not professional writers. Procrastination. I know it needs work, but I’ll do it after I get this draft of a NEW [...]
As I’ve said in previous posts, this was a difficult year for me personally because of my husband’s surgery, my daughter’s wedding and my son’s difficult school year. Knowing that it would be hard, I started Friday Ideas as a way to keep on producing picturebook ideas, but in a low-pressure sort of way. It’s [...]
Rhyming Picture Book Bibliography If you’ve been around children’s literature long, you know that editors often say they don’t like rhyming books. What they really mean is they don’t like bad rhyme. Presented here is a bibliography of recent rhyming picture books. Study these as examples of successful books in this category. I’ve edited it [...]
No. I did not go to a HP party at Midnight on Friday. No. I did not buy HP7. No, I do not know who died. (PLEASE tell me. I don’t mind a spoiler!) I didn’t buy Harry Potter because I’ve been busy shopping for other things. Here’s the 10 things I’ve bought instead: 1. [...]
Novel Diagnosis Series Introduction Characters Dialogue Scenes Voice VoiceRevisited Plot This is a chart showing the variation in length of sentences. Green is for Lizzie Bright, page 33; pink is for Westing Game, page 33; and orange is for one of our readers, PB, page 33. (Waving to PB! Thanks for listing your sentence lengths.) [...]
Novel Diagnosis Series Introduction Characters Dialogue Scenes Voice Plot Novel Diagnosis–Audience Because the last Harry Potter book comes out tomorrow, it’s appropriate today to talk about audience. How do you make sure that your book is going to reach the target audience and that they will enjoy reading it? Traditional answers The main character should be [...]
Novel Diagnosis Series Introduction Characters Dialogue Scenes Voice VoiceRevisited Plot After a couple days off for the Phoenix retreat, I’m returning today to the Novel Diagnosis series with a discussion identifying major plot elements. Plot consists of the story’s events that build upon each other to lead to a resolution of a conflict. This means [...]
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