Tweet In last week’s intro post, I posited that not prewriting your novel is like not taking a map on a quest (which happens to end with facing down a fire-breathing dragon). Today we’re going to take a look at that metaphorical map and figure out just what it really is. Caveat Caveat emptor: Let […]
Tweet I’m going to start with the punchline today, and then backtrack to tell you where the information came from (and why it’s interesting). I’ll even explain why I told the story in reverse order. But first, the info. Submission Requirements for the Amazon Imprint 47North If you want to submit a novel for consideration […]
Tweet I’ve spent a couple weeks trying desperately to finish up Taming Fire for publication this month. But last time we talked, it was about the questions that keep people reading your stories, and the big story question that drives your story forward. I said offhand that well-designed story questions and scene questions make it […]
In the post, read about the three most important words in your novel.
Tweet At long last, I’m going to fulfill a promise made weeks ago. I’m going to teach you some storytelling terminology. As I admitted to Joshua Unruh yesterday, I tend to work off a couple different writing glossaries that use some overlapping but non-identical terms. That means when I say “plot point” in one context […]
Having no idea whatsoever how long it might take to rewrite Legend’s Heir (working title), and needing a writing project other than blogging (so that I wouldn’t go crazy), I sat down this past weekend and started rewriting what I am now referring to as The Monster Epic Fantasy Novel (MEFaN) — thereby proving that I have gone crazy.
Tweet I started the week with the story of my two novels: Gods Tomorrow and Ghost Targets: Expectation (in stores February 15th!). Specifically, I talked about the covershoots for both books, and the surprises they held for us. Those little surprises are pretty troubling, especially when the book is so close to being published, but […]
Tweet Five months ago, with Gods Tomorrow poised on the brink of publication, I brought my awesome photographers (Julie and Carlos of Julie V. Photography) to town to shoot some art for the cover. I made arrangements with our model, scouted locations, and put together a whole covershoot in the space of about a week. […]
Tweet We’ve been talking about “debugging” your book — about committing to a cover-to-cover review that will make up the first stage in your document’s rewrite. With any luck you’ve had enough time by now to catch your breath. With any luck, opening up the book no longer feels you with the anxiety and frustration […]
Tweet November’s finally at an end. So far I’ve loved every NaNoWriMo I’ve participated in, and I’ve been intensely grateful when each one of them ended. It’s part of the process. I had a good year in 2010. That sentence is true all on its own, but I mean it here particularly as a comment […]
