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Last week, I posted about schemes, or formal arrangements of words. Yesterday, I was reading through Schott’s Original Miscellany , an odd collection of facts. My husband keeps this book and the Guiness Book of World Records in our “bathroom library” for browsing. I had forgotten that Schott’s has a list of Churchill’s use of schemes, [...]
The Twenty Worst Literary Agencies. (Thanks to Anastasia Suen’s blog.) Janni’s humorous take on The Joy of the Second Draft. I love looking at book covers and imagining how well each would sell. Well, here’s a flaming good one, complete with a slip cover. It’s always fascinating to see how well the visual captures the [...]
I’m still reading and absorbing Peter Dunne’s information in Emotional Structure: Creating the Story Beneath the Plot. Basically, he has a 7 or 8 step process of developing an outline that begins with a simple Three Sentence statement about the story. Each sentence covers one act. Here’s an example from his book: Indirection Scott [...]
The Arkansas SCBWI will hold its fall retreat, Voice: The Writer as Ventriloquist on September28-30, 2007 at Mt. Magazine State Park. Speakers are author Kathi Appelt and Candlewick editor Hilary Breed Van Dusen. We’ve just had a cancellation, so there’s an open spot. If you’re anywhere close to Arkansas and want to join us, you [...]
I’ve read enough of Peter Dunne’s book, Emotional Structure: Creating the Story Beneath the Plot, to start to say a few things about it. Outlining First, some of you will shy away from this book because his method is one of outlining and quite extensive planning ahead. But you might find his method a bit more [...]
From their fantasy novels–can you name the author of each opening line? Do you recognize their voices? (All published since2003) 1. Getting dressed was always the hardest part of the afternoon. 2. Jack woke before dawn and listened to the cold February wind lash the walls of the house. 3. Rain fell that night, a [...]
Editor Requests Revision Two weeks ago, I got a revision letter from an editor about a picturebook. Hurrah! You can guess what I did. I tore the mss apart and revised and revised. I read it aloud. I reseached typical dialogue for different regional dialects, so I could personalize the characters. I sharpened the conflict. [...]
In a comment yesterday, Becki wrote: “Wanted to pass something on that I heard an author mention at a presentation the end of July. She was asked how she wrote–by hand, or computer. She said that she wrote by hand. She found that the computer interrupted the flow with grammar/spell checks. Everytime she stopped to [...]
This fall will be the first act of the 3-Act Retreat: Characters & Plot, Revision and Marketing, featuring Elaine Marie Alphin. I’ll be teaching the Second Act next spring and then in the fall, we’ll have an editor and agent talk about Marketing. It’s a great way to take a novel from the beginning stages [...]
I am thinking about what I want to post about this fall (well, school started, so it’s “fall” for me) and I thought I’d ask what you want. I am going to study character this fall, especially reading two specific books which have many exercises. I expect you’ll hear about some of those. Would you [...]
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