Share on facebook Facebook Share on twitter Twitter We teach our students how to write and get published! View our Course Catalog > All of us struggle with fear. It’s natural. Rejection is painful, so we want to avoid it. As a writer, avoiding that fear usually means reducing the number of submissions we make,…
Share on facebook Facebook Share on twitter Twitter We teach our students how to write and get published! View our Course Catalog > Much of the time, when we come up with our goals connected to writing, they involve writing a certain number of words, completing a project, or submitting material. But there is one…
Share on facebook Facebook Share on twitter Twitter We teach our students how to write and get published! View our Course Catalog > With publishing still adjusting to the results of a pandemic, there has never been a more important time to recognize that goal setting is all about planning for things you have the…
Share on facebook Facebook Share on twitter Twitter We teach our students how to write and get published! View our Course Catalog > Maybe It’s An Agent For writers with high concept books (works that can be summed up in a few, movie-poster type words) or who are writing primarily young adult novels, you may…
Share on facebook Facebook Share on twitter Twitter We teach our students how to write and get published! View our Course Catalog > As with virtually every industry, publishing has faced new challenges during the pandemic, even though book sales have stayed strong (especially in children’s books). The issues aren’t with lack of sales, but…
The whole publishing process is a journey up a mountain after the path has been washed out. Remember, it only takes one editor to connect with your work.
Share on facebook Facebook Share on twitter Twitter We teach our students how to write and get published! View our Course Catalog > The first thing to understand about writing is that publishing doesn’t make you a writer. Writing makes you a writer. So if you write fanfiction or raging opinion pieces or notebooks full…
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 > 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 > 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 > 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 > 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 > 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…
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…
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…
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 > 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 > Stories for very young children are short. In fact, picture books these days are usually around 500 words and often well under. Stories for children’s magazines are often the same length or…
Share on facebook Facebook Share on twitter Twitter We teach our students how to write and get published! View our Course Catalog > What Do We Need from Each? Although the structure of both fiction and nonfiction can be broken down and described in different ways, one simple method is simply to think of your…
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 most common pieces of writing advice is “write the story that is in you” with the companion advice of “trends don’t matter.” So is that actually correct? If you…