Uncertainty of First Drafts

First Drafts are Uncertain, by Nature
I’m at that fragile stage of the first draft when I’m not totally committed to this story. I’m still feeling my way and haven’t yet gained confidence that I will like the story, or that my readers will like it. I’m walking on eggshells.
What can I do to GET committed?

Drastic Revision in Search of Voice

When you revise your novel or story do you look at what you wrote before or start totally from scratch?
Revise Previous Text
Usually, I’ll work with the text that I already have written. The idea here is that I’m close, but it isn’t quite there yet. In this case, I’m refining the text and story as [...]

Test Your Skill at Characterization

Ever wonder if you’re good at characterization in your novel or story? A good way to evaluate your skill in characterization is the Page 5 Test.
Page 5 Test: Are you Good at Characterization?

Read the first five pages of your manuscript.
Turn over page 5 and on the back,

Combine 2 Plots?

What to Write Next?
I’ve just wrapped up a few novel project, or else they are cooling down. It’s time to swim around and hope that I find some interesting bait and get hooked on the next novel. In fact, I’m eyeing two bits of bait right now and trying to decide if either will do. [...]

10 Checkpoints for Scenes

Does your Scene Pass this Checklist?

Where/When. (Setting) Did you orient the reader at the beginning of the scene? Does the reader know where this takes place: room in house, city, state, country, etc? Does the reader know when this takes place: time of day, season of year, place within chronology of story? If the [...]

after the holidays

Picking up the threads of a story is difficult after a holiday. Here’s four suggestions for making it easier:
Read. Read through a couple

Separate POV chapters

More Than One POV? Split to Revise
My current draft of my WIP novel has two point of view characters. I’ve just copied each POV into its own separate file to revise and edit.

Voice. The main reason for this is to work on getting a consistent voice for each point of view. When they are intertwined, [...]

Line Editing

While we were traveling last week, I didn’t get any new scenes revised, but I did do some line editing.
3 Line Editing Strategies
When I line edit, I’m trying to balance three things:

Smooth, easy to read. First, I want the text to be smooth and easy to read. I try to read aloud or

Teen Voices

Listening to Teens
Yesterday, I taught writing to a dozen at-risk teens. We worked on a personal narrative for about 4-5 hours. Now, the kids didn’t want to be there, but had to be. They didn’t want to write, because it’s summer and who wants to do English class in the summer.
For the first fifteen minute [...]

Obama is a Doodler

I am woefully behind in sharing some great posts with you! Here’s a ton of links to articles of interest.

Dori Butler just interviewed me for KidLit Central about my experience of judging the SCBWI Works-In-Progress Grantl
Meanwhile, check out this podcast: Carla McClafferty is featured on Book Bites for Kids, talking about her new book, [...]