The saying goes, “Tell your readers everything they need to know and nothing they don’t need.” Simple enough: make it “juuust right,” like Baby Bear’s porridge. But how do you know how much is enough… or too much? I wish I could give an easy answer. If we take a look together at the possibilities, I bet you can come up with an answer on your own that fits your writing style. Too Hot! First, there’s the danger of too … Read More »

We all know that the more reviews a book receives, the better—whether reader responses on Goodreads, BookBub, or Amazon, or professional editorial reviews. But writer, beware: the more reviews pile up, the more likely it is that one or more of them will be bad. That’s statistically inevitable. There is no one book that everyone likes (except maybe Harry Potter). People’s tastes and expectations are too varied. You try to pitch your work to those who “like that kind of … Read More »

The herring fish of Eugene Field’s poem “Winken, Blinken and Nod” was probably a special glittering creature, because the fishermen went after them with nets of silver and gold. Writers, on the other hand, are always interested in the infamous red herring. A device especially employed in mysteries, it can be used in other genres as well. What is a red herring and how can it be a helpful item on your authorial menu? Let’s take a look. A false … Read More »

My blog today is addressed mainly to those of my colleagues who are writing a series or a trilogy, and it’s probably something you already know, but a reminder never hurts. You’ve started off your series with a great book that plunged us immediately into the time and place. Something spectacular has happened to start a chain reaction that will play out over the next few volumes. And finally, you stuck your ending, and readers are breathing heavily and saying, … Read More »

The writer’s group to which I belong recently instituted a new practice, which doesn’t replace but enhances our reading of our works in progress. At every meeting, one of us provides the group with a prompt—an image, a few words—and we all create some short work inspired by it to submit for critique at the next meeting. The variety of “takes” on the prompt is always stunning. Some are serious, some are lighthearted. This person may submit a poem, another … Read More »

We all want our novels to be so full of sensual detail that the reader can imagine everything in technicolor. Is there such a thing as too much description? Clearly, every reader’s expectations — and every author’s style — is different, so “too much” is a range, not a point. Nobody has to warn us against purple prose. But is that really too much description, or is it bad description? A typical purple problem is to use an extreme amount … Read More »