Top How to Write Books for Writers

The Writers Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers This is a great book to read and build on. It alone won’t make “all clear,” but it’s a foundation book you have to read to get the most out of other theories. I mainly consider this a plotting book, but it has other elements too. Goal,...

Online Resources for Writers

Feeds |Sites | Newsletters Why reinvent the wheel – especially if you can’t invent a better wheel? With that in mind, here are some links to great resources I have found trolling the web. I’ll update as I go along, so check back. –RSS Feeds– This is a sample of the feed...

For Book Titles That Sell, Make it High Concept

There was a time when I would have argued titles don’t sell books. I would have been wrong. Now there is good reason behind my previous thinking. More often than not I don’t remember the actual title to the last book I read. I remember characters or plot or author, but the title, especially with...

Writing a book? This better be personal!

A friend of mine, Intrigue author Ann Voss Peterson, has a mantra concerning books and the main characters’ goals and motivations. It needs to be personal and it needs to be important, very important at least to the character—to the world is even better. (but that doesn’t work for every type of...

How do you know you are reading a romance?

This may seem like a strange question, but it is one I encounter a lot. Maybe not in the actual question form, but from people who think they know the answer and oh so obviously don’t. In fact, even writers who say they write romance don’t always know what makes a romance, at least when looking...

To love a Trickster

Last weekend I was on a panel at OddCon titled People and Animals. It’s a pretty wide topic and the conversation varied a lot, but one thing that came up (Okay, I think I brought it up…) were tricksters. I love tricksters. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the trickster (or...