by Stephanie Morrill | Apr 8, 2010 | Uncategorized
Today’s nugget of wisdom comes from James Scott Bell’s The Art of War for Writers. I recently read and fell in love with this book, so this won’t be the last time you see me mention it on here. I think it’s a great read for new writers as well...
by Stephanie Morrill | Apr 6, 2010 | Uncategorized
First of all, if you haven’t already commented on my author blog for a chance to win Sarah Sundin’s A Distant Melody, do so now! If you mention you’re a GTW (Go Teen Writer) reader, you’ll get entered twice. Sarah’s an awesome writer and...
by Stephanie Morrill | Apr 1, 2010 | Uncategorized
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...
by Stephanie Morrill | Mar 30, 2010 | Uncategorized
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...
by Stephanie Morrill | Mar 25, 2010 | Uncategorized
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,...
by Stephanie Morrill | Mar 23, 2010 | Uncategorized
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...
by Stephanie Morrill | Mar 18, 2010 | Uncategorized
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...
by Stephanie Morrill | Mar 16, 2010 | Uncategorized
Just that you know literary agents exist puts you far ahead of where I was when I started submitting manuscripts for publication.In theory, this is how the process of getting an agent works. (In theory. More on that later.)1. You select a handful of agents you think...
by Stephanie Morrill | Mar 11, 2010 | Uncategorized
A reader e-mailed me to ask, is it normal to always write about a character who’s basically me?I hope so, because I did it all the time.I think this is an easy thing to do for a couple reasons:1. We often use writing as a way of exploring ourselves. Our...
by Stephanie Morrill | Mar 4, 2010 | Uncategorized
So since we’ve covered Writing a Good First Line, Writing a Good Opening Scene, and Writing a Good Middle, it’s only natural that we talk about what makes a good ending.This is one of those topics that has a variety of answers because a good ending is more of a feel...
