Where Normal Need Not Apply
I love when I make my readers think. Even better is when they turn around and make me think even deeper about an issue. *smile* Yesterday, K.J. Pugh blogged about my last post (where I talked about cliffhangers and hooks) and brought up the issue of sequels I briefly mentioned. No, […]
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Pitches, queries, back cover copy, and full-length stories all have writing techniques in common. For one thing, they all need a strong opening. We talk about that being a “hook,” something that grabs the reader and pulls them forward to the next line, paragraph, and page. A similar approach works within […]
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In my post last week asking if we can have too much voice, some great questions came up in the comments. I decided to turn them into “Ask Jami” blog posts rather than bury the answers in the comment string. Earlier, I shared ideas on how to use color-coding to check if […]
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Is it possible to have too much of a good thing? Sure. We’ve all overindulged in our favorite foods before. No matter how much we might like sweets or any other type of food, something can be too sweet, too rich, too whatever. In my last post about how to add […]
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Before I start, thank you to everyone who commented, tweeted, and emailed me with support after my last post about losing my cat. You all have filled me with virtual hugs and put a smile on my face. Thank you. *hugs back* In fact, after writing that post and reading […]
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It was a dark and stormy blog post. *snicker* We’re continuing to prepare for the January 10-16th Pitch Your Shorts pitch session by tackling the issue of story openings. (Check out Tuesday’s post for everything there is to know about pitching.) While the purpose of a pitch is to get a request, […]
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With fiction, a fine line exists between stories we can relate to (no matter how fantastical the setting, characters, or plot) and those we can’t. We’ve all heard the phrase “suspension of disbelief” in relation to movies and books to explain how we accept the impossible. Every genre has different […]
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Artists of every type find inspiration all around them, and writers are no exception. Ideas might come in the form of a dream, a “what if” question, an overheard conversation, etc. Those are all fairly normal sources of inspiration. Personally, I’ve been inspired by dreams, “what if”s, an 80’s music […]
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Many writers, especially new ones, talk about how they write for themselves. When we first start out, we might not know if we’ll even be able to finish the project, so it makes sense that we’re writing for ourselves. We want to get this story out of our head. We want to […]
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Wish me luck. I’m about to dive into one of the eternal debates among writers. Which is “better”: a plot-driven story or a character-driven story? If you’re not familiar with the debate, let me explain why this question is so fraught with potential landmines. A common snub against genre stories […]
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