This is the fifth and final post in my series on the benefits of writing with an outline. In my first post, I listed three reasons why most writers need an outline. In the second, I discussed three things to keep in mind when creating an outline. In the third, I talked about how to use one while… Read more »
Point of view is tricky and a lot of writers struggle to make sense of it. We often think of writing purely as an art but when it comes to point of view (POV), there’s definitely a science to it. When I first started writing I had no idea what POV was all about so… Read more »
“I try to write every single day, but some days life gets in the way and I can’t do it. Then I feel really guilty. How do I find time to write every single day and how can I stop feeling guilty when I’m not writing?” – Guilty in Galveston Yeah, so. There’s this thing… Read more »
As an American-born Chinese, I grew up in a small, southern town in North Carolina and spent my summers off in Shanghai, China. In our house, when my sister and I weren’t watching Nickelodeon, we were watching Chinese dramas like Huan Zhu Ge Ge, or “Return of the Pearl Princess.” Even though I couldn’t understand… Read more »
Here’s a quick sneak peek of our flagship course DIY MFA 101. We have a private, members-only website for the class, with exciting features to make accessing the course materials easy. The workshops unlock sequentially on different weeks of the class. Each workshop contains three video lessons with companion worksheets. We also include an audio-only version and… Read more »
Welcome to our very first podcast interview. My goal with these interviews is for you to hear directly from top authors, agents, editors and book industry experts. It is such a pleasure to be interviewing the fabulous author, and a good friend, Karen Dionne, for our first interview. Karen is the internationally published author of Freezing… Read more »
“Write beautifully, with a strong, distinctive voice, and have a premise worthy of such great writing.” These words–from my own agent (Jeff Kleinman at Folio Literary Management)–are probably the best advice I’ve ever received as a writer. After all, the #1 way to improve your odds of getting published is to write a great book so… Read more »
The first five pages of your manuscript are SO important. Not only do they set the tone for your entire story, but when you submit your novel to an agent, the first five pages are the first thing (aside from your query) that the agent is going to see. This means that you have to… Read more »
Go to any bookstore or library in China and you’ll find hundreds of novels written in boxlike characters made up of different undulating strokes and curvy lines (like this: 爱). In a large bookstore chain like XinHua, you’ll find those same books stacked alongside a section of “foreign works,” often written in English or their… Read more »
The notion that one should not understand too much about how to write is very common in writing workshops across the country. The refrain is that one should only write. I don’t think that attitude is helpful. We value experiment in science; we respect practice and rehearsal in theater and music; yet many fiction writers… Read more »
