The Problem with “They”
In my Writing Enchanting Prose workshops I teach my students to open a story in such a way that it doesn’t leave ambiguity about who the viewpoint character is, where he or she is, or what they are doing. In other words, if Jeff Gormsky is chasing a carjacker down a back alley in Chicago, […]
Audience Analysis Part 5
Identifying Your Book’s Target Audience Tuesday I explained a little bit about how the term “resonance” is used in literature. In music we use it to describe how one melody draws power from what came before, and in literature we do the same. Thus, when you read a book that affects you powerfully–whether it be […]
Analyze Your Audience Part 4
For the past few days I’ve been talking about how you can try to maximize the size of your audience for a novel. Today I’m going to give you what is probably the most important lesson that I can give to a new writer. So let’s start talking first about the buying habits of book […]
Analyze Your Audience Part 3
I mentioned in yesterday’s post three elements common to all of the bestselling movies and books of all time–the fact that ALL of them are set in another time and place, nearly all of them are aimed at a broad audience (the only exception in film being The Godfather, which was aimed at a primarily […]
Analyze Your Audience Part 2
I took a lot of writing classes in college, and I think that in just about every one that I took, the professor pointed out that the world is made up of both men and women, but beginning writers typically only write stories for people of their own sex. That’s because they are used to […]
Writers of the Future
Recently I finished editing L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers and Illustrators of the Future, Volume 35, and in another week I’ll begin judging for next year’s anthology. For those who don’t know what the Writers of the Future contest is, it’s a contest that was founded more than 35 years ago by L. Ron Hubbard. Over the […]
Audience Analysis Part 1
Identifying Your Book’s Target Audience As a new writer, you might not have given a great deal of thought to audience analysis. I’ve known good writers who don’t seem to understand it at all. For example, one #1 New York Times Best-selling fantasy author right now insists that he doesn’t write fantasy. He has magic […]
Accepting Responsibility for Your Novel: Editing
When you write a novel, the chances are good that the publisher will hire editors to massage your text. There are problems with that, of course.Not all editors are as good as you’d like. Editors get tired. Editors don’t get paid enough. Editors have lapses of judgment. Your editor might not like your work. He […]
Most Common Editing Problems
One time I taught a writing workshop in Salt Lake City and spent some time reading stories. In the past, I haven’t spent much time talking about stylistic problems, but I thought it would be interesting to bring up the six problems that I see most often: 1) Weak verbs. Very often, people will use […]
Performing Your Tale
Many writers will recommend that as you edit your tale, you do a final read-through so that you can see how the story sounds. After all, if you’re going to be doing readings in libraries or at signings, you want to make sure that your tale flows well, that it’s free of typos, and that […]