A Writer’s Hierarchy of Needs
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a motivational theory developed by psychologist Abraham Maslow. The hierarchy, comprising a five-tier pyramid, explains the connection between basic human needs and motivation. Bryan E. Robinson has adapted this scale to consider what needs writers must satisfy to move their dreams of writing success up the...
Pacing Your Plot: 20 Ways to Rethink Your Narrative Pace
Jodell Sadler offers 20 tips about the art of narrative pacing, featured among 200 other tips in her upcoming WD book Pacing Your Plot.
Conquer Procrastination: How to Appreciate Your Writing Time
If you are avoiding writing, if you tell yourself you don’t have enough time, try the following: Write a short description of what is waiting for you at your desk. What will happen when you sit down to write? Remember: Writing is never about what happens, but what it feels like...
Develop Daily Writing Resilience to Succeed
“Writing is so difficult that I feel that writers, having had their hell on earth, will escape all punishment hereafter.”—Jessamyn West The dead aren’t supposed to walk among us, but they do. I’ve seen them—writers frazzled from publishing’s frenetic pace, spirits dead from unfulfilled and stressful career demands—empty shells, comatose like...
Partner with Your Publicist: Why You Need Literary Publicity
Every author wants his or her book to be a success. Dreams of best-seller lists, grand book tours with sold out speaking engagements, and that coveted interview with Oprah, luxuriate in the backs (and often fronts) of many the writerly mind. But the process of connecting the dots between first draft...
The Five Little Secrets of Memoir Writing: A Contrarian POV
A memoir can be a massive undertaking. As writers, we sometimes take pride in this complexity. It makes us seem, well, more professional. It can also alienate us from real people. And real people have stories to tell. Very real stories. So it becomes important that we set aside our biases...
Three Keys to Selling a Children’s Picture Book Biography
I love picture book biographies. I love reading them and being inspired and thinking, “Wow, that’s an amazing story. How come I didn’t know that?” And I love writing them. Why? Because picture book biographies are all about inspiring kids to their own greatness. This is important to me. In addition...
Cross-Genre Fiction: Using Research and Imagination in Hybrid Genres
I write a detective fiction series set in World War II Britain. My lead character, Detective Chief Inspector Frank Merlin, is a tough and experienced Scotland Yard police officer engaged in the grueling fight against crime in wartime London as his country battles heroically for its survival against Nazi Germany. During...
6 Pitfalls to Avoid When Writing LGBTQI+ Characters in Teen Fiction
Author Lisa Freeman shares 6 pitfalls for writers of YA and MG fiction to avoid when creating LGBTQ characters for their audiences.
How to Transform Funny Stories into Comedy Writing Gold
Funny stories that comedians perform in clubs are called anecdotal stand-up. These stories can be based on real-life experiences or they can be made up. In either case, there are three keys to transforming a funny story that your friends enjoy into anecdotal stand-up that can entertain an audience. Build frequent...
Research Tips for Writing Nonfiction
I recently moved into a new house and office, and was faced with carting along decades of writing research in the process. Books, albums, boxes of photos, cassettes—that was the easy part. Assembling the stacks of files, the collapsed cartons of photocopies, insect-infested pamphlets and newspaper clippings, the 10,000 pages of...
Building Self-Care Habits: Refilling the Creativity Well to Write Your Best Work
In the writing community, we often talk about “refilling the well,” an idea that we understand conceptually, but is often lost in translation when we try to apply it to our lives. What does refilling the well actually look like and how do we make time for it in our already...
The Great Debate: To Prologue or Not to Prologue?
As many of you know, book publishing industry professionals and readers alike have openly expressed their dislike of prologues. Act first, explain later. Great advice from James Scott Bell. Be careful with backstory and prologues. #writetip — Nat Russo (@NatRusso) September 30, 2017 Yes! Prologues don't work all the time, do...
Marketing & Sales Perspectives for Indie Authors
I’ve considered myself a professional writer for a little over three years now, and I’ve learned a great deal about the publishing industry in that time. Much of how I think and what I do as an independently published author parallels the experiences of my traditionally published friends, but there are...
Switching Genres: How One Author Transitioned from a Young Adult Audience to Adult
When I heard an author say that it took years to complete their latest book, I assumed they were lazy. I mean, I wrote thirty-one YA novels in ten years. During that time I also got a puppy, moved across the country, had two kids, went for (and failed) my California...
5 Things the Screenwriting Business Taught Me About Writing
A confession: I bristled at being called a “screenwriter” while jacket copy for Magicians Impossible, my debut novel, was being finalized. Everyone else wanted that facet of my biography in; I wanted it out. I didn’t want to be “screenwriter with debut novel,” which to most reading pegs said debut novel...
5 Tips for Querying & Choosing a Literary Agent
So you’re in the query trenches. You’ve been gritting your teeth through this process for months, weeks, years, millennia, and suddenly, an e-mail comes in with the golden ticket: OFFER OF REPRESENTATION. The call goes beautifully, you are ready to sign. Then your inbox dings again. And so it begins. ...
Breaking In: Josh Barkan
Josh Barkan is the author of Mexico (January 24, 2017; Hogarth/Crown Books), a collection of short stories that capture the beauty, strangeness, and brutality of life in modern Mexico. He’s also published two other books: a novel, Blind Speed, and a collection of stories, Before Hiroshima. His writing has appeared in...
Promotion on a Shoestring Budget: 5 Tips for Publicizing Your Book
Congratulations on publishing your first book! Maybe it’s actually the second or third book you’ve written, or your tenth, but at long last a publisher has recognized the genius even you had begun to question. Go on and open that bottle of wine that has aged so gracefully, if a little...
Literary Scouts: How to Get Your Book Directly to a Publisher
Note: The following is a guest post from Stephanie Stokes Oliver, an author, editor, and scout for Simon & Schuster’s Atria Books. For more information on Stephanie’s scouting guidelines, see below. You can find her online at stephaniestokesoliver.com. Cheers! You’ve finished your manuscript, and are preparing to begin your search for...
How to Write While Managing a Full-Time Job: 5 Ways to Maximize Your Time
2. Take advantage of small moments. Let’s be realistic. If you work a full-time job and have any kind of life, sometimes small moments are all you’re going to get out of a day. If you’re in the doctor’s office (okay, that may be a large moment), or waiting for your...
6 Tips for Reading Like a Writer
I’m willing to offer this generalization: whatever level we’ve attained in our development as readers, we always lag behind that standard as writers. I’ve never met a good writer who wasn’t also a great reader. The more broadly and deeply we read, the more we recognize excellent writing in its endless guises and...
What To Know Before You Submit: 28 Great Tips from Literary Agents
(This is Part 1 of a three-part series to kickstart your awesome 2017. Part 2 is a roundup of query letter submission tips, and Part 3 is a list of literary agent pet peeves.) The New Year is here, and that means new goals, new resolutions, and new writing projects to...
Collaborating with your Subconscious
Do you want readers to love your protagonist? Or to be inspired by her? A powerful tool for achieving the strong visceral responses you want is outside your conscious mind, but it’s not out of reach. Everything you write, especially a first draft, is a collaboration with another writer: your subconscious....