By Jeanne C. Stein How do you keep a reader engaged? Creating and Maintaining Suspense Our goal as a writer is to entertain, and make the reader care about your story. How do you do this? By creating and maintaining an emotional bond with the reader, by manipulating their emotions, by creating and maintaining suspense….
Category: General Interest
When Life Gets in the Way
By J.A. (Julie) Kazimer Ever heard the saying, When Life Gives You Lemons? I’m sure sick of the bite of lemonade right now. Since January, and my stupid New Years’ resolution to write daily, the most I’ve written is 500 words and that was in the cafeteria of a hospital. My dad has been having…
From a Dinosaur Publishing in a Digital World … by Chris Goff
Okay, I admit it, I got into this game long enough ago that my first words were scribbled on white tablets, with mistakes scratched out and arrows drawn to indicate where whole passages needed to be moved. Later, I typed stories on a manual typewriter, keeping copious amounts of Wite-Out on hand. Later, because an…
Pigeon-holed or typecast? It can happen to any writer
By Mary Gillgannon I know how picky readers can be, but I never realized it would affect me until I was analyzing the sales of my indie published books. I have twelve books available, and sales of those titles vary widely, and always have. Some of my books I’m lucky to sell five a month….
POLITICAL INTRIGUE IN FICTION
By Kevin Paul Tracy This month’s post builds on the ideas in February’s post with thoughts on infusing fictional politics into your fiction. In that post I refer to the root of all politics, economics, and how ultimately it is commodities in high demand – oil, gold, the spice Melange – and the need to…