Michael Shay
A Flash in TimeMarch 25, 2017
Holly Niner
No More Noisy NightsJuly 29, 2017
Alicia Klepeis
Little Gestalten
June 19, 2020
Explaining STEM and STEAM
Share on facebook Facebook Share on twitter Twitter We teach our students how to write and get published! View our Course Catalog > If you’ve spent much time reading guidelines recently, especially those for educational publishers, you’ve almost certainly run across one of two acronyms related to nonfiction: STEM or STEAM. STEM stands for science,…
Narrative Nonfiction: Finding the Lesser Known Story
Share on facebook Facebook Share on twitter Twitter We teach our students how to write and get published! View our Course Catalog > Many new writers whose greatest goal is writing fiction shy away from writing nonfiction. They recall texts read as children without pleasure and don’t want to create material like that. But nonfiction…
How To Find Hot Nonfiction Topics
Share on facebook Facebook Share on twitter Twitter We teach our students how to write and get published! View our Course Catalog > Overall, if you want to write in an area that has the widest array of openings, especially for new writers, the way to go is nonfiction. More publishers (both magazine and book…
Cover and Query Letters
Share on facebook Facebook Share on twitter Twitter We teach our students how to write and get published! View our Course Catalog > The vast majority of submissions you will make during your publishing career will include a letter. If the letter travels on its own, it is a query letter and must carry a…
Finding Markets in Difficult Times
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…
You Only Need One
Share on facebook Facebook Share on twitter Twitter We teach our students how to write and get published! View our Course Catalog > Shopping your work around, hoping for an agent and then a publisher to fall in love with what you have written is a grueling journey, and not for the faint of heart.…
Structure in Narrative Nonfiction Articles
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…
Beginning, Middle, and End
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…
Top Three Narrative Nonfiction Missteps
Share on facebook Facebook Share on twitter Twitter We teach our students how to write and get published! View our Course Catalog > #1 Starting Badly Bad beginnings are probably the surest way to kill a sale of your manuscript because you can lose the reader so quickly with a bad beginning. So what makes…
Narrative Nonfiction and Magazines
Share on facebook Facebook Share on twitter Twitter We teach our students how to write and get published! View our Course Catalog > If you’re interested in trying your hand at narrative nonfiction, there are options beyond massively researched full-length books. Some children’s magazines buy narrative nonfiction in the form of biographical sketches, profiles of…
Narrative Nonfiction
Share on facebook Facebook Share on twitter Twitter We teach our students how to write and get published! View our Course Catalog > Melissa Stewart, writer and nonfiction evangelist, fills her Twitter feed with books and bits to help writers and buyers better understand nonfiction. She’s made nonfiction her life. And she explains that nonfiction…
How Do I Tell Where I Fail?
Share on facebook Facebook Share on twitter Twitter We teach our students how to write and get published! View our Course Catalog > According to Dr. David Dunning, a psychology professor at Cornell, we are not good judges of our own competency. In other words, we aren’t very skilled at telling if we’re good at…
Picking the Right Word
Share on facebook Facebook Share on twitter Twitter We teach our students how to write and get published! View our Course Catalog > Polishing a manuscript involves both big picture corrections, such as plot issues or motivation issues for your characters, and incredibly small, picky bits where you’re really bringing out the shine in each…
Perfectionism Alert
Share on facebook Facebook Share on twitter Twitter We teach our students how to write and get published! View our Course Catalog > How Polished Does It Need to Be? In the many views about the importance of polishing a manuscript, there are two opposite ends of the spectrum. First are the writers whose work…
Dialogue: Don’t Forget the World!
Share on facebook Facebook Share on twitter Twitter We teach our students how to write and get published! View our Course Catalog > For each scene of your story, you need to make two choices. First, what will be exchanged between characters? This is the dialogue half of the scene. The second? Decide where the…
Checking for Ruts
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 things that keeps writing fresh for me is trying new things. I can always tell when I’m in a rut, because my excitement for the writing wanes. Whenever I…
The End
Share on facebook Facebook Share on twitter Twitter We teach our students how to write and get published! View our Course Catalog > As I type this, I’m minutes away from having finished my last pass of revisions on a novel. I sent it off to the editor. I know, of course, that I’m not…