Yesterday, I read this great article by Nat Russo about how important it is for writers to master the craft before we start defending our style. Click on his name to read the whole thing (which I recommend), but here’s a chunk of it: You’ve heard people do this. When you offer constructive criticism, they’ll…
I want to have a little fun today. Last night, I took my kids to a birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese. For those of you who live across the pond, CEC is a pizza place/kids gaming establishment. There are some video games and other activities that kids play to win tickets. They exchange the…
Every story needs certain elements to be a story. We’ve talked about characters, settings, and problems. If we’re following the mnemonic below, that leaves us with solutions to talk about. Cows = Characters See = Setting Pretty = Problem Sunflowers = Solution This works great for eight-year-olds learning the parts of the story they should…
Originally posted on DAN ALATORRE:
Author John Winston As the author of the IA series, I’ve had some success on social media, and people often ask me for tips. Well here’s the skinny. ? I use Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter equally, but it’s my firm and religious belief that Goodreads is the past, present, future,…
I haven’t been an author for long, especially compared to the literary giants who have become household names. Most of those guys have been writing longer than I’ve been alive. But even so, having a couple published books under my belt has taught me some things – things I didn’t completely expect, though a couple…
I wasn’t planning to blog today, but then I saw this article on Facebook. Since nearly 100,000 others were talking about it, according to fb, chances are good that you saw it too. If you don’t want to read it right now (though I’d recommend doing so at some point) the premise is this: Life is…
A few weeks ago, in the post about setting, I shared with you a mnemonic I used with my students to help them remember the important parts of a story: Cows See Pretty Sunflowers. Cows = Characters See = Setting Pretty = Problem Sunflowers = Solution All these things are necessary to have a good story.…
A way cool review of Drake and the Fliers came out today on the site Talk Nerdy With Us (cool name, huh?). I’m not able to reblog directly from there, but I wanted to share the review with you guys, so I got permission from the author, Tracy Miller, to copy and paste it here.…
This week, the hubs and I will celebrate our anniversary. Our 13th anniversary, to be exact. Our marriage is officially a moody teenager. You know how each anniversary has a meaning that goes with it? Like the 1st is paper and the 25th is silver? I looked up the 13th, half expecting to discover it’s…
If you dig into a writing group, you’ll likely discover two camps: short story writers and novelists. Short story writers specialize in a greater number of short pieces of fiction (let’s say up to 10,000 words), while novelists spend their time writing fewer long works (an “average” adult novel is 80,000 – 100,000 words). Writers…
Allison Maruska 