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Yesterday, December 31, my friend Charlie Woods rode his bike 60 miles and finished his yearly goal of 10,000 miles. That’s an average of 27.8 miles per day and he’s been hitting that goal for over 3000 days. Yes, without fail. Rain or shine (he has a stationary bike for bad-weather days), sick or healthy, [...]
Need to know how well your writing, editing and revisions are going? Here’s a variety of checklists to help you evaluate where you are in the writing process. Checklist of 17 Character Qualities 10 Checkpoints for a Scene Style: Checklist For Fiction Writers Editing Checklists for Story, Plot, Characters, Dialogue and more. A Novel Writing [...]
I am thinking about doing NaNoWriMo this year, joining with thousands of others in trying to write 50,000 words–a novel–during the month of November. You can’t count any words written before November 1, but I know I can’t do this if I don’t work on a plot before the mad rush officially begins. So far, [...]
I wrote a first draft of a picture book this week. Except, I didn’t finish. And that’s a good thing. This often happens to me when I’m writing the first draft of a picture book or the first draft of a chapter. I write and write and write, then suddenly stop. Why stop? I’ve learned [...]
Here’s a question from a reader: Is it ok to use dialogue to tell the main character about the fantasy world she just entered via her sidekick who lives there? I’m not sure how else to do it. Is there such a thing as too much dialogue? Thanks for the question! Where to Include Exposition [...]
Debut Novel: Spreadsheets Used for Plotting and Revising a Novel Introduced first in 2007, debut children’s authors have formed a cooperative effort to market their books. I featured Revision Stories from the Classes of 2k8 and 2k9 and this feature returns this year with the Class of 2k11. Class of 2008 Class of 2009 MORE [...]
I’m sending out my novel today. Long ago, when submissions were paper, writers and authors often went through rituals to send out a manuscript for their novel or picture book. A lucky cat had to sit on the manuscript. It had to mailed with certain types of stamps. You kissed the envelope for luck. IN [...]
Voice begins with the right choice of words Each story or novel has its own diction, or the group of words that could be used for this story. For example, a historical fiction would have different word choices than a romantic comedy. Of course, there’s lots of overlap, but each story has certain words that [...]
Design Star Finds Voice Last night, I watched HGTV crown the new “Design Star,” Meg Caswell. I had watched some throughout the season and the judge’s commentary always made me think of the writer’s voice. One of the challenges of the Design Star is to meld entertainment and solid interior design, making information fun. While [...]
Do things get worse in your story? Then you are using some sort of progression: good, worse, worst. That’s excellent, because you want the story characters to increasingly feel the conflict and tension of the story. But are you using the BEST progression possible? In my current revision, I am checking my progressions to make [...]
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