Amid and Among
Writers often get mass nouns and count nouns confused. Among is used with count nouns—meaning you use it with things…
Plot Goals ~ Seeing Is Believing
The most essential of essentials in your first scene is setting up your visible plot goal. Did I say visible?…
Publishing Predictions for 2012 ~ The Ebook Revolution Continues
Paula Krapf, a blogger with the author marketing expert blog, ended last year with a look at trends that took…
A Few Misused Words I Can Accost You With
I like to keep a list of words that are used incorrectly; here are a few. You might want to…
Yes, You Do Need a Theme
Last week we looked at the need to ditch all the back story in our first scene (well, actually the…
Eek! EBooks!
We’ve been looking at the explosive trend of eBook distribution and the decline of traditional publishing these last few weeks….
Don’t “Try and” Do Anything!
One of my big pet peeves is the “try and” construction, which many writers fall victim to because we have…
Hold Back the Back Story
Because I read hundreds of first chapters of novels a year as a writing coach, contest judge, and copyeditor, I’ve…
Doors to Publishing That Were Never Open Before
Last week, Mark Coker, founder of the eBook distributions site Smashwords, posted a blog summarizing his company’s performance over 2011…