POV and Voice

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 – revising [...]

Pacing

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 in such [...]

Voice Friday: Words for Your Voice

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. There’s one more consideration.
Search Your [...]

5 Barriers to Revision

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 [...]

First drafts

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 [...]

Rhyming picture books bibliography

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.
Thanks to [...]

10 Reasons I Did Not Buy Harry Potter 7

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. Schwinn Sierra Women’s [...]

Novel diagnosis–voice revisited

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.)
Last week, I suggested that a [...]

Why do kids like Harry Potter?

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 slightly older than the target audience.
Boys will read about boys; girls [...]

Novel Diagnosis–Plot

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 it should start with a conflict and end with [...]