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Success: What Price Does Your Character Pay?
I’m getting much closer to actually starting my new novel, but I’m still asking myself a crucial question. What is the cost of success for the main character? Loss of innocence. If you write a bildungsroman novel, that genre which take a main character from
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Establish the Emotional Arc
As I’m working on the plan for this new novel, creating characters and trying out voices, I’m trying to strengthen my weakest areas. My Weakness is Character My weakness is character. I can plot fine, but creating characters with plausible character growth is hard for me. I think I’ve got it and my friends tell […]
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Manuscript Length
How Firm are Book Publisher’s Guidelines on Picture Book Length? I had a question come up last week: how hard and fast are the rules about the length of a picture book manuscript? Can you get by with 1900 words? 2000 words? 2500 words? The length requirements for every genre, from picture books to easy […]
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4 Files to Prevent Mistakes
Use the power of your word processor to help you keep track of details while writing a novel. You’ll have fewer mistakes Have you ever forgetten the color of a character’s eyes? Keep a Character Bible: create a file in which you keep descriptions of each character. This is much easier than hunting through a […]
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5 Writing Tasks for Off Days
Ever have one of those off days? You don’t sleep and wake up grouchy. You’re half sick but not really sick enough to call it a sick day. You are just disgruntled and don’t know why. 5 Things to do on Off-Days On those awful days, there are still tasks you can do to be […]
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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.