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Your Favorite Book Sucks: 'The Kite Runner'
July 23rd, 2012
An ongoing column, written by different people, that takes a classic or popular book and argues why it isn't really all that great. Confrontational, to be sure, but it's all in good fun.
Read Column →Ask The Agent: What State Of Completion Does Your Manuscript Have To Be In When You Start Querying, Query Letter Word Count and More!
July 23rd, 2012
I received SO many wonderful questions this past week. It was really hard to choose only a few to answer. Keep an eye out for future columns; I may eventually get to your question.
Read Column →Storyville: Promotion
July 20th, 2012
For many authors it’s a dirty word: promotion. And believe me, I understand that. For many of us, the idea of talking about our work, spreading the word, posting up about it across the internet—it’s all just too much. Why can’t we just write? Well, unfortunately that’s not the way it is these days, and never really was, to be honest. Even the biggest names in writing have to take the time to go on book tours (which usually lose money), as well as sign copies, give interviews, and generally promote themselves.
Read Column →Top 10 Character Cliches That Drive Me Nuts
July 20th, 2012
Archetypes are important, but they're no excuse for lazy writing. These particular archetypes drive me batty because they create a series of characters that are interchangeable and formulaic. Fill in a few blanks and you can generate your own Mary Sue or Reluctant Hero with very little effort. When she was ___ her ___ died. He was unwilling to leave his ordinary life in ___ to journey to ___ and save the ___. It's like People Mad Libs, and that's no way to write a character.
Read Column →5 Ways Your Brain Sabotages Your Writing... And What To Do About It
July 19th, 2012
When we sit at the keyboard, we rely on our brains to help us fill that vast white space with intriguing words, well-rounded characters, and watertight plot twists. Sometimes our brains oblige. But more often, our grey matter tells us that we should check Twitter (because what if our blog post got a retweet from someone important?), that we totally have time to catch up on TV while we eat lunch (because that’s just smart multitasking right there!), or that we should quit this writing nonsense and get a real job (because we suck anyway). Everything happens for a reason.
Read Column →YA Superstar: Meg Cabot
July 19th, 2012
Over at Forever Young Adult, we have a term we like to use to describe the feeling or action of being totally obsessed with something. It sums up the tingles of giddy excitement that sweep through your body when you think about your favorite author or TV show, as well as the complete irrationality of your subsequent behavior. The term is "swimfan," which we borrowed from a movie starring Erika Christensen as a bonkers psychopath who becomes fixated on a high school swimmer.
Read Column →As A Writer, Does It Matter Where You Live?
July 18th, 2012
A few weeks ago The Economist wrote an article so ridiculous I'm still wondering if it's real: The news that Martin Amis had just spent $2.5 million on a brownstone in Brooklyn's Cobble Hill neighborhood turned into a cream session over how Brooklyn was the new literary frontier.
Read Column →Two More Comma Rules You Oughta Know!
July 18th, 2012
So you’ve had a few months to think over, practice, and master the three comma rules I presented to you in April, and now it’s time to learn two more that will help you spruce up your writing while still satisfying those pesky grammarians.
Read Column →Acting on the Fictional Stage: The Dramatic Method in Fiction
July 17th, 2012
One of Stanislavski’s major contributions to acting theory was the concept not of “appearing” to be a character, but of “being” that character. In that regard, writing a short story or a novel may be even harder than acting, because in order to pull it off, you don't have to play just one role, you have to play all of them.
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