Tag: writing
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Writing Interesting Secondary Characters who Move Your Story Forward
Do your secondary characters fall flat? Or are they threatening to steal the story from your protagonist? Both are common problems that can be addressed by asking yourself this question: How do my secondary characters relate to my protagonist?
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Uncommon Tips for Self-Editing Your Book
In this post I’m sharing specialized skills for polishing your manuscript that most people won’t learn unless they train to be a copyeditor. Even when you are going to be working with a professional editor, self-editing is an important step so that your work is as clean as you can make it, leaving the editor…
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What A Literary Agent Wants Writers to Know
I asked a literary agent to sit down for an interview—an anonymous one, so they could speak with full frankness: How do you impress a literary agent? What are they really looking for in a query? In a manuscript? What factors make them decide to take an author on? What red flags scream “unprofessional”?
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What it’s Like to Work with a Professional Book Editor
So you’re considering having your manuscript edited, but it’s a daunting decision to make. I know I can’t fully erase the anxiety that goes with handing your book over to someone else, but I hope that I can ease it by giving you a detailed look at the process.
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Why Your Picture Book Manuscript Got Rejected
Before I was a freelance editor, I worked in house and was often the first pair of eyes reviewing manuscripts. Frequently, I knew within a few lines that a picture book manuscript wasn’t going to be suitable.
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The REAL way to handle “said” when writing dialogue
You’ve been taught the wrong approaches to deal with the too-frequent use of the word said in written dialogue. Having too little variety in your dialogue tags is only a symptom of a deeper underlying issue: too little variety in your sentence structure. Once you solve for that, your repetitive dialogue tags will clear up…
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Juvenile Fiction: Understanding Lower Middle Grade, Upper Middle Grade, Chapter Books, and More
New sub-categories of juvenile fiction keep emerging to help kids find the right books for every developmental stage. We can break them into two main groups: simple chapter books for emerging readers, and more complex middle grade novels for independent readers. These groups are then broken down further.
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Rescue the Structure of Your Nonfiction Book
While your subject is the topic your book is about, its thesis is the organizing idea your book is setting out to prove. All nonfiction needs a thesis, not just academic texts.
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Middle Grade vs. Young Adult Novels: The Definitive Guide
Middle-grade novels, which are written for ages 8–12, tend to be shorter, more optimistic, and written with clear (but not unsophisticated) simplicity. YA novels, written for ages 12+, can be grittier, more introspective, and sometimes more complex.
Erin Alladin 