Setting the Stage for Nonfiction Success
Nonfiction is a deep market, popular with readers, and well worth considering. Today we chat about what it takes to be successful in nonfiction for kids.
Nonfiction is a deep market, popular with readers, and well worth considering. Today we chat about what it takes to be successful in nonfiction for kids.
Facebook Twitter We teach our students how to write and get published! View our Course Catalog > With all the competition from Kindle Unlimited, self-published books, and traditional publishing’s blitz of new releases and re-releases, getting and keeping a reader’s attention has gotten difficult. You need to entice the reader from the very first line,…
Using props in your setting can give your character interesting things to do and what your character chooses to do will tell the reader about their personality.
Write a setting so integral you can enhance your characters’ experiences, drive home your theme and mirror the characters’ journey through the novel.
Share on facebook Facebook Share on twitter Twitter We teach our students how to write and get published! View our Course Catalog > All stories are told by someone. Sometimes it’s a chorus of voices as the writer dips into the consciousness of more than one character, revealing their thoughts. More often it’s told by…
Facebook Twitter We teach our students how to write and get published! View our Course Catalog > Is your pacing too slow? Need to pull out your writer tools to increase story pacing? This is Part II of my “editing description to move the story forward” article. Part I focused specifically on scene imagery. This…
Lengthy descriptions of setting can feel slow and gratuitous, but we mustn’t throw away this essential, tool. Let’s talk about how to do setting well.
Facebook Twitter We teach our students how to write and get published! View our Course Catalog > If you’re looking to increase the tension and keep readers turning the pages, become a master of story imagery. We’re told to have sensory details, and imagery descriptions to create a well developed setting. But imagery runs the…
Scenes are the building blocks of the story. A scene is simply the action and dialogue that takes place at a specific location in a specific time in the story.
Facebook Twitter We teach our students how to write and get published! View our Course Catalog > Having anxiety about creating a book marketing plan? I did, and I’m a marketer. Going through that period of freak-out on my own novel project helped me understand, for the first time, how creating a marketing plan could…
Share on facebook Facebook Share on twitter Twitter We teach our students how to write and get published! View our Course Catalog > Here’s the thing about writing. Eventually, no matter what else you do, you’ll get stuck. Just this week, I was stuck trying to come up with a sixth book idea for a…
Here are the top 3 sources of writer’s block and how to bust right past them from guest blogger Kristin J. Dawson. Read on for tools to help you right now!
Many writers struggle with plot. Plot has to mix and blend characters, theme, premise, and more. So, let’s break down the essentials of plot.
Facebook Twitter We teach our students how to write and get published! View our Course Catalog > We spend months, even years, weaving characters and conflicts into a story. We cut, tweak, and rearrange. Yet if someone asks what our story is about, we might be dumbstruck. “It’s about a woman who inherits a cosmetic…
Share on facebook Facebook Share on twitter Twitter We teach our students how to write and get published! View our Course Catalog > Like most writers, I’m prone to clutter. Clutter in my office with one deep drawer in my desk where I toss an alarming variety of things. And shelf clutter with all the…
Facebook Twitter We teach our students how to write and get published! View our Course Catalog > Stuck Is a Symptom, Not the Cause Whether you write for fun or profit, you likely have had this experience: You feel the adrenalin rush about a story idea. It is so clear in our thoughts that it…
Facebook Twitter We teach our students how to write and get published! View our Course Catalog > Writing is work. Now, I’m not one of those who think writing is suffering or agony. Honestly, if it were agony, I’d do something else with my time to make money for my family. But it is work.…
Facebook Twitter We teach our students how to write and get published! View our Course Catalog > We’re all Captain James T. Kirk when we sit down to write. We boldly go where no man or woman has gone before—and we take readers with us. The idea is not to drag them kicking and screaming.…
Share on facebook Facebook Share on twitter Twitter We teach our students how to write and get published! View our Course Catalog > This week is mostly going to be story time, so let me share some with you. When I was younger and single, folks had a tendency to assume I had a lot…
Share on facebook Facebook Share on twitter Twitter We teach our students how to write and get published! View our Course Catalog > Some writers create playlists for their books. Some do elaborate interviews with their characters. Some just can’t get started until they come up with names: name of the book, name of the…