Do You Read Recently Published Books?
Should writers read current books in their genre? Some say this is common sense, but others think it’s controversial. Why should we read recent books?
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Pitching Our Story: Insights from Movie Trailers
When pitching our story, we might struggle with figuring out which elements to focus on. How do we decide what to emphasize in our pitch?
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What Defines Our Story? Drive vs. Focus
Ever feel like popular writing advice doesn’t apply to your story? Defining our story’s mix of drive vs. focus might help us know when advice is a bad fit.
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Recognizing Quality Writing: Can We Tell If We’re Any Good?
What makes writing “good” takes more than just learning writing craft. That gap between tangible skills and enjoyable stories means it’s always difficult to define what makes for good writing—especially our own.
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Editing Processes: How Do We Improve?
No matter our publishing path, our work always needs to go through an editing process, but when are we ready for editing? How will we know? If we start too soon, we’re likely to struggle and waste time and/or money.
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Story Tropes: Lazy or Helpful?
Every genre and medium of storytelling uses tropes, and they often have a bad reputation—for good reason. All too frequently, they can indicate lazy storytelling or worldbuilding. But they don’t have to be a bad thing.
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What’s “High Concept” & How Can I Create It? — Guest: Jeff Lyons
Last week, Jeff Lyons shared how to make every story idea the best it could be. Today he’s delving into the tricky description of high concept. Many agents and editors say they prefer high-concept stories, but what does that mean?
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The Ultimate Guide to Pitch Writing
No matter how we publish, we need to introduce our story to potential readers and interest them enough to want to look closer. Whether we’re pitching and querying agents or enticing readers with back-cover blurbs, we need to grab their attention.
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What’s the Difference between Plot and Story?
When we first start off as writers, if someone asks us about our story, we might launch into an overview of our story’s plot. It’s easy to think the plot is what our story is about. But with few exceptions, story isn’t the same as plot.
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What Makes Your Story Unique?
Ever heard “write the same but different”? Usually agents want something similar enough to other stories that they know they can sell the book but different enough to not feel like a retread. Whether we’re writing queries for traditional publishing or back-cover blurbs for self-publishing, if we can identify how our story is unique, we can better sell our story.
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