Share on facebook Facebook Share on twitter Twitter We teach our students how to write and get published! View our Course Catalog > The sidekick, a character who supports the main character, is almost as much a part of a good mystery as the detective. The sidekick gives the detective someone to discuss the case…
Share on facebook Facebook Share on twitter Twitter We teach our students how to write and get published! View our Course Catalog > In last week’s post, I told you about Catherine Aird’s article “Planning and Plotting the Detective Story.” Here are the points that were lightbulbs for me, and why I think you should…
Share on facebook Facebook Share on twitter Twitter We teach our students how to write and get published! View our Course Catalog > Any fan of mysteries would be happy to tell you that mystery detectives come in all shapes and forms. Some are detectives because they want to be like Sherlock Holmes, Encyclopedia Brown,…
Share on facebook Facebook Share on twitter Twitter We teach our students how to write and get published! View our Course Catalog > In last week’s post, I gave you two clues. With only one accredited class in genre writing under my belt, and a dozen creative writing classes that came nowhere near 221b Baker…
Share on facebook Facebook Share on twitter Twitter We teach our students how to write and get published! View our Course Catalog > The Clue-Theory-Test Method of Plotting Mysteries For many writers trying mystery writing for the first time, one of the things that feel the hardest is leaving clues for the reader. So let’s…
Share on facebook Facebook Share on twitter Twitter We teach our students how to write and get published! View our Course Catalog > Every story ever written contains some element of mystery. We’ll talk about that and a lot of other things over this four-week series. In a mystery novel—a whodunit, a police procedural, a…
Share on facebook Facebook Share on twitter Twitter We teach our students how to write and get published! View our Course Catalog > Basically every book I write is an adventure story or a mystery, and many are both. By definition, a mystery involves a puzzle with someone trying to solve the puzzle. For adults,…
Share on facebook Facebook Share on twitter Twitter We teach our students how to write and get published! View our Course Catalog > If you decide to write a holiday-themed romance, the first thing you need to do is decide if you want to self-publish it or if you want to go the traditional route.…
Share on facebook Facebook Share on twitter Twitter We teach our students how to write and get published! View our Course Catalog > One of the issues with writing romance in young adult novels lies in the question of how far to push the love scenes. Do you stop at the kiss and fade to…
Share on facebook Facebook Share on twitter Twitter We teach our students how to write and get published! View our Course Catalog > The key element that makes a novel a romance is the ending. How to conclude your book so it’s satisfying to the genre readers who have set expectations? By ending with the…
Share on facebook Facebook Share on twitter Twitter We teach our students how to write and get published! View our Course Catalog > Like any strong story, romance needs conflict. Without conflict, romantic stories can be dully predictable. After all, the vast majority of romances end with the characters together. Readers are confident that will…
When writing a romance novel, how do you should you handle sex scenes? Tips for writing open and closed-door sex scenes from Jamie K. Schmidt.
Share on facebook Facebook Share on twitter Twitter We teach our students how to write and get published! View our Course Catalog > With romance such an important element of YA novels, it can be easy to focus all the attention on creating the main character, only to give the second romantic lead less attention…
Romance readers have expectations for a novel depending on the sub-genre. Writing a successful novel hinges on following the romance tropes.
Share on facebook Facebook Share on twitter Twitter We teach our students how to write and get published! View our Course Catalog > The Romance novel is an example of the kind of evergreen genre that simply never stops selling and selling well. Not only that, but in young adult (YA) novels, some strong romantic…
Avid romance novel readers have made the romance genre a billion-dollar industry, but romance has come a long way in the 21st century. Read our primer here!
Share on facebook Facebook Share on twitter Twitter We teach our students how to write and get published! View our Course Catalog > It all begins in your head Those of us who tend to plan our stories extensively before we write don’t pull that plan from our heads in a complete, coherent form. Just…
Share on facebook Facebook Share on twitter Twitter We teach our students how to write and get published! View our Course Catalog > The covenant is the pact writers make with readers, the promise to deliver a riveting story with unforgettable characters and an ingeniously clever plot. The author also promises to tell the story…
Share on facebook Facebook Share on twitter Twitter We teach our students how to write and get published! View our Course Catalog > Most nonfiction can be roughly divided into two types: expository or narrative. Expository nonfiction is mainly concerned with conveying information. The most common structure of expository nonfiction consists of breaking the main…
Share on facebook Facebook Share on twitter Twitter We teach our students how to write and get published! View our Course Catalog > A short story is exactly what it sounds like, a story of not very many words. Editors determine how many, and they decide based on how much space they have available in…