Friday, September 27, 2019
Layers of Time in Fiction and Memoir: How Does a Writer Weave Past, Present, and Future into Scenes without Creating Too Much Exposition?
›
Your scenes have voltage, electric current, for readers. But in most novels and memoirs, there are layers of electricity, because there ar...
Friday, September 20, 2019
Dialogue Engages--But What If Your Memoir Characters Just Don't Talk Much?
›
Candace is writing a memoir. Her characters are the opposite of talkative. She took my online dialogue class earlier this year and learne...
Friday, September 13, 2019
Are Your Characters Too Nice, Controlled, Predictable? Here's How to Bring Out the Tension and Make Them Vivid (But Still Not Serial Killers)
›
Annie, one of my readers, got surprising feedback from her writer's group. One of her novel's characters, an abused woman trying t...
Friday, September 6, 2019
Lessons from Margaret Renkl: How One Memoir-Writer Circled Round Family, Nature, and Loss
›
How does a memoir writer weave family stories into a larger whole? This is the perennial challenge. Unless you already have a fan followi...
Friday, August 30, 2019
When a Writer Describes an Emotion You've Had (Without Quite Realizing It)--Power of a Book's Effect on Its Readers
›
Think your writing doesn't matter? This week's writing exercise is to educate yourself (and inspire yourself) on the effect our wo...
Friday, August 23, 2019
Breakdowns and Breakthroughs--The Sine Wave of Book Writing
›
One of my coaching clients, a very skilled writer, wrote me a few weeks ago about the temper tantrum she was having with her book. It...
Friday, July 19, 2019
When Your Book Wants to Be Something More: The Persistence Required as Your Book Reveals Its Real Story
›
One of my long-time students, Linda Zlotnick, recently published her memoir, Star Sisters. The core story is about the death of her tw...
Friday, July 12, 2019
Great Resources for Studying Up: On How to Submit Your Manuscript to Agent or Publishers
›
One of my blog readers from Europe is preparing to submit her first book to agents and publishers. She has plans to attend the Internatio...
Friday, July 5, 2019
How Do You Create Section Breaks--the White Space Pause--in Your Chapters or the Whole Book?
›
A great question, simple but important, this came my way from a former student who is working on the first draft of her memoir. When you...
Friday, June 28, 2019
Is It Too Late? Successful Publishing After Forty, Fifty, Sixty?
›
Writers can become successes at any age--we know that, and we know it's the quality and timeliness of their work that makes that succ...
‹
›
Home
View web version