Writing killer dialogue

Mastering smart, zippy dialogue is one of the keys to catapulting your manuscript from good to great. Readers love good dialogue, and nothing slows down a book more than stiff, clunky conversations between characters.Dialogue is something we’ll revisit in depth...

How Important is Research?

A reader e-mailed me (all the way from New Zealand! Go kiwis!) to ask this question: All the writer sites I visit and book acknowledgements I read have something in them about research. How important is this? I mean, I know its important to get your facts right, but...

Journaling your Characters

Okay, did I sufficiently cover the topic of how to acquire an agent? If you have follow-up questions, please feel free to e-mail me. It’s such a huge topic, I’m sure I missed something.Moving back to actual writing.At conferences, writers often ask agents,...

Book Proposals (Getting a Literary Agent Part 3)

Part onePart twoOkay, part three – book proposals. I used to haaaaaaaaate book proposals. But like most other things in life, the more you do it, the better you get.By book proposal, I basically mean the first three chapters of your book and a synopsis, which is...

Query Letters (Getting a Literary Agent Part 2)

Part One of this series is here.I can’t tell you how to write a fabulous query letter. I rarely garnered interest for my manuscripts with this method, but I do know what information needs to go in said letter.1. Your genre and word count. As in, “This is a 55,000 word...