Dialogue is easy to spot because it has those nifty little quotation marks, but not all text that isn’t dialogue can be lumped together. The difference between description and exposition can be tricky to determine but it is most definitely there. The key is to remember this equation: How can we distinguish between description and… Read more »
If you have a blog, then you need an editorial calendar. Sure, it’s good to leave a little room for flexibility and spontaneity and you could even get away with winging it for a while. Sooner or later, though, if you want your blog to be an effective part of your author platform, you need… Read more »
This past weekend, I had to do something that pained me at my very core: I decided to remove blogs from my Google Reader. I realized I had been following so many blogs that I had no chance of actually reading them all (the number was upwards of one thousand, I think). For some time,… Read more »
Some writers embraced it from the beginning. Others of us have been skeptical, but we can’t fight it anymore. Like it or not, social media has become firmly entrenched in the lives of writers, and it’s here to stay. It can be an overwhelming proposition to jump into social media or try out a new… Read more »
This week we’ve discussed how to submit your work. While we’ve focused on submitting to literary magazines and online literary markets, many of the same ideas also apply when querying agents. Today’s prompt works equally well, whether you’re a writer of short fiction or poetry and looking for markets for your work, or if you’re… Read more »
While I was in grad school for my MFA, I spent the first year working on campus literary magazine. For the staff, the primary responsibility was to read submissions and decide what went in the magazine. That year, I learned a lot about submitting work to literary magazines, and applied what I learned when submitting… Read more »
Publishing is a subjective business. It’s easy to forget this. Writers often get so caught up in fear or rejection that they avoid submitting work altogether. This is understandable, of course. It’s much less frightening to tinker with one’s work until it’s perfectthan it is to send the work out into the world. It’s a… Read more »
I first learned to sketch out a story in a novel-writing class. The purpose of the sketch is to provide a snapshot of your work-in-progress (WIP), capturing all the important information on one page so that you can see it all at a glance. This technique is especially useful when you need to give a short excerpt… Read more »
As you might have noticed, I’m really into design. A graphic designer and product manager in a past life, you could say I’m a little bit obsessed with clean lines and balanced designs. I love problem-solving so that form and function work together seamlessly. One of the areas that most fascinates me in design is… Read more »
Remember back in grade school when we used to cut up magazines and glue the pictures on a board to make beautiful artwork? Believe it or not, collaging is a great way for writers to explore and express the mood of their project. I learned the benefits of this technique when I was in design… Read more »
