Category: Meet the Editor

Today we’re going to go to my all-time most-often-viewed post: 10 Things to Do to Become a Better Writer in 10 Days. Now, I’m not entirely certain why this particular post has garnered as much interest as it has. Maybe it’s because we love to idea of becoming substantially better… Read more“10 Things to Do to Become a Better Writer in 10 Days”

This topic came from @__Deb, and it’s such a good idea I’m going to extrapolate from it for two more weeks, covering all three aspects of scene: description, action, dialog. “Show, Don’t Tell.” Write scenes, not exposition. Description is important because: Details create the life on the page If there… Read more“3 Reasons Description is Important, 3 Reasons It’s Not”

You know how everyone’s always telling you “Show, Don’t Tell”? Well, that means “Write Scenes, Not Exposition.” So we’re spending three weeks covering the three aspects of scenes: description, action, dialog. Last week we did description. Next week we’ll do dialog. And this week we’re doing action. Action is important… Read more“3 Reasons Action is Important, 3 Reasons It’s Not”

We’re talking about the pros and cons of the three aspects of scenes: description, action, dialog. Now, as we all know, dialog is the mainstay of modern fiction. Raised in a world of television, radio, and telephones, we as an industrialized race are familiar with nothing if not the power… Read more“3 Reasons Dialog is Important, 3 Reasons It’s Not”

Now, you all know who Shirley Jackson was, and if you don’t you can find out from last week’s post about Stephen King. She was most famous for her story “The Lottery,” in which the citizens of a small American town draw an annual lottery to stone someone to death—a… Read more“5 Things I Learned from Shirley Jackson”

I love ghost stories. Particularly the whole gothic genre of the nineteenth century: intense questioning of reality layered with beautiful houses and dramatic landscapes and sometimes hilariously-dated kitsch. I’ve read all of Mrs. Radcliffe. Whooee! I especially love the whole concept that my love for ghost stories is the other… Read more“7 Things I Learned from Stephen King”

I promised you guys a long time ago that whatever I learned from the fabulous Notebooks of Henry James I would share with you here. I haven’t finished it yet—it’s a heck of a long book, plus I got completely sidetracked by Shirley Jackson’s key to increasing tension over time,… Read more“3 Things I Learned from Henry James”

A bizarre thing happened to a client of mine one day. This author is one of my best clients. She’s been writing all her life. She has a fabulous imagination and sees her characters moving and acting and speaking with wonderful vividness. She’s written lots of screenplays, so her dialog… Read more“3 Things to Know About Exposition & Telling”

We’re talking this month about vetting publishing professionals as you work your way from your original inspiration all the way to actual publication—particularly the role that freelance independent editors play in this journey. A funny thing happened in the publishing industry thirty or forty years ago. We went through all… Read more“Understanding agents”

This is writers conference month here, so a few weeks ago I taught you guys how to get people all riled up at you at a writers conference.Then we discussed what to watch out for in the way of presenters—the bullshitters and the non-bullshitters, part one and part two. So… Read more“3 Writers, 1 Conference: a Story of Hope”