I had the chance to interview bestselling author Heather Burch at a regional writers conference. She writes Young Adult and Adult novels, and she is the most organized author I have had the opportunity to learn from in my career. If you want some expert advice and insight, this woman Read more…
Book Summary What if you had your favorite superhero’s power but you couldn’t control it? Super Powereds explores this idea in a four book series. In a world where some are born with superpowers (Supers) and a fraction of those can’t control those powers (Powereds), five unlikely allies with a Read more…
I recently went to my second regional writers conference since starting my professional writing career. These gatherings are specifically for authors, editors, agents, and publishers. The goal of conferences is to help writers make connections and learn more about the publishing industry. The ones I attended were done as a Read more…
Your book is full of hooks to engage the reader, and your book title is your front line. If you’re lucky enough to get your book shelved face out, then the cover art might be the first hook. However, most books are shelved with the spine out, and the title Read more…
Story structure comes in many variations with just as many ways to classify it. One of the leading voices on story structure is Orson Scott Card and his MICE Quotient. He divides all stories into four categories based on what element the author values the most when writing the story. Read more…
When you get deep into the research of writing novels, there is cross over with writing screenplays for movies. One phrase I recently came across in my research is the Four-Quadrant Movie Model. Though not all screenplay concepts can be used for novels, I think this one is something we Read more…
After a year of running my website, I’ve learned a few tricks, and I’d like to share one with you today. When you have a website where you get comments from the public, there is always spam comments. While some of these are easy to spot, I’ve almost been fooled Read more…
I already touched on the topic of internal conflict, and this week I want to dive into it a little more. Character wound is a concept that continues to surface in my writing research. A wound refers to an impactful negative event that happened in the character’s past and created Read more…
A hook is something that evokes intrigue in the readers. It can be a catchy title, gorgeous cover art, intriguing book summary, glowing book review, or compelling premise. Most often for writers, it’s little tidbits we put in the book to make the reader turn the page. Why Hooks Work Read more…
We already covered portraying a character’s emotions, and now I want to address the emotions we try to arouse in our readers. When an author writes something to get an emotional response from the reader, we call it an emotional beat. These are very useful in connecting with the readers Read more…