A core premise of the critique process is that we are making suggestions about the work, not evaluating the person who wrote it. Critiquing is already quite personal, in that we are telling a creative person that their creation has flaws. No one is eager to hear that. Add to that some critical remarks about the writer as a person and it becomes painful. It helps to avoid sentences that start with “you,” for two reasons. One, we aren’t supposed … Read More »

Agents and editors (and RPLA) are likely to want a synopsis. But how can you condense a story from hundreds of pages to two or three pages? It seems impossible. Don’t worry, it is possible. Here are some ideas: Use only the main plotline. Yes, the subplots are fascinating, but they cannot be included in a synopsis. Use only the main one, two, or at most three characters by name. Anyone else that has to be mentioned can be described … Read More »

Fiction writing is an awkward compendium of art and craft, and one with very few absolutes. A physicist can drop something off a roof and know with certainty what gravity will cause it to do under all conditions. A writer has dozens of rules, conventions, alternatives, options, and style choices. Having written, we then hear from critiquers, readers, editors, and publishers that the work is, or isn’t, cohesive, engaging, properly punctuated, correctly formatted, in the currently preferred style and point … Read More »

You wrote a great book. Unfortunately, a few million other authors also think they wrote a great book, and they’ve put it on Amazon, too. How do you get people to notice your book in the vast digital crowd? 1. Five ways to improve the product: Reviews are dandy, unless an honest reviewer has to say the book is poorly edited, insufficiently proofread, has holes in the plot, or just doesn’t make sense. Join a critique group. Other eyes will … Read More »