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, [...]

Surprise Yourself in the First Draft

I’m working on the first draft of a novel and I’m about 2/3 of the way through the plot, when something interesting happened.
Embrace Exploration
I’m at a point where the E, the main character, is house bound for a couple days and suddenly M, his friend, becomes the legs of the story, the only character who [...]

Voice for Picture Books

Voice is important, whether you’re writing a novel or a picture book.
One question that often arises is, “Can you revise for voice?” Yes. Here’s an example of how it worked for me.

A Year of Voice Descriptions

Before December 11, 2006, I wouldn’t have thought to describe a character’s voice. Then along came Vocal Impressions on National Public Radio. Wow! It’s evocative to describe a character’s voice, and if you use a metaphor that also evokes a character quality, you’re even farther along!
Raw Voice + Apt Metaphor = Characterization
From [...]