by mike | Apr 10, 2013 | Adventure fantasy, Books, Publishing, Writing |
Having been a teacher, coach, editor—and, of course, a novelist—for the past couple of centuries, I have heard it all from wanna-be writers about how difficult it is to make themselves sit down and begin writing a book, which at the least should be 70,000 words in...
by mike | Mar 26, 2013 | Books, Editing, Horror, Native Americans, Psychological Thrillers, Publishing, Research, Writing |
Last year, in a post titled, “Writing Novels For Fun And…Fun?” I made the following observation: When I made the commitment to start writing novels a long, long time ago I began by sticking to one of the basic tenets: Write what you know. I knew Edgar Rice Burroughs,...
by mike | Feb 20, 2013 | Books, Editing, Publishing, Writing |
Okay, one more post on how writers engage their readers with a strong opening hook, and then I’ll get back to other important matters, such as bad horror movies. Actually, this is the only topic about writing to which I’ve devoted three posts, illustrating just how...
by mike | Feb 14, 2013 | Books, Editing, Publishing, Writing |
In Part One of this series I wrote about how important—how necessary—it is for writers to engage their readers immediately with an element of the story called the narrative hook. Both literary agents and, ultimately, readers want to get into your story quickly, or you...
by mike | Feb 10, 2013 | Books, Editing, Publishing, Writers' Conferences, Writing |
A novel is made up of quite a few elements, among them characterization, dialogue, point of view, setting, and so on. But in my mind, the most important element—without question—is the story’s opening, what we call the HOOK, or more specifically, the narrative hook....
by mike | Feb 4, 2013 | Books, Editing, Psychological Thrillers, Publishing, Research, Writers' Conferences, Writing |
August McLaughlin is “one of my writers”. More important, she is also a great friend. We met at a writers’ conference some years back—perhaps fortuitously, or even inevitably, as she had come to the conference on a quest to find a writing coach and mentor. Seems she...
