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Writing for Kids? It’s easy, right? Recently, I’ve talked to several beginners and here’s some of the most common advice I give. Main Character to Relate to and Identify With What age are you writing for? Adults? Then, you need an adult main character. Teens? Then, you need a teen main character. Elementary age kid? [...]
I am working on a novel revision for an editor and I expect to turn it in by Monday. But today, as I was reading through one last time to polish everything up–oh, my gosh!–there’s still so much work to do. Last Minute Revisions At this point, it’s not major structural changes or big plot [...]
We’ve done several 30-days series over the last few years. I’m considering topics for a couple “30 Days” series this year, probably March and October. What topics would you like to see? Plot, publicity, career, voice? Something else? Leave a comment, please, and let me know what interests you! Newly updated 30 Days series 30 [...]
Innocent Openings for Novels “Stories should begin at a point of innocence.” When I read that recently, I had to stop and consider: where should you start a story? Point of Innocence: Don’t Foreshadow the End The main point of this quote is that you shouldn’t start with something like, “It was the worst day [...]
I’m currently revising a picture book and finding it to be a bit tricky because I created animal characters. Of course, in a fiction picture book, animal characters are often just stand-ins for kids. Why Use an Animal Character in a Fictional Picture Book? Get Rid of Adults. I wanted to have two characters playing [...]
Last week I was wondering if I could combine two plots into one. One idea was for an Event and one for Characters. While I still think they could have meshed, the character story took off on it’s own into a short story. Now the question is what to do with the Event idea, how [...]
Shrunken Manuscript Technique Helps Visualize Problems Following my directions for shrinking, marking and evaluating a novel, here are some recent examples:
Answering the WHY? question It’s the WHY question that is plaguing me right now. Why does my character want to participate in this project? Why does she want this so much that she will
All About the Town InkyGurl.com is posting Comics for Writers!!! Another month to write? It’s the WriDaNoJu. This one makes more sense to me than trying to write a novel in November. Aren’t these names getting funny? The NaNoWriMo, the WriDaNoJu, the NaPiBoWriWee and so on. An interesting list of Picture Book Don’ts. Victoria Janssen [...]
3 Tips for Using Mulitple Point of View Characters Limit the number of POV characters. A general caution is to limit the number of POV characters so the reader can be emotionally invested in those few. Zuckerman, in How to Write the Blockbuster Novel, recommends no more than five main characters. Usually, one of the [...]
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