It is #IndieApril in the Twitterverse, and RMFW has a robust list of independently published authors. While I plan on spending all month promoting this talented group of writers, I wanted to talk specifically about how they approach the art of first lines. There are countless ways to start a story, but the best is…
Tag: reading
Plotting Whiplash
I remember reading Stephen R. Donaldson’s Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever as a teen and feeling frustrated. At the time, I didn’t have the experience to define the source of that frustration, but later in life I was able to put my finger on it. I was reading good-sized books about epic fantasy adventures,…
Cutting a Trail Through the Jungle of Great Adventure Novels
Adventure novels, at least the really good ones like Peter Heller’s The River, take up a permanent home in our imagination. They rise up from a literary jungle of suspense, following a path cut by the best adventure books of all time. Early childhood friends helped to beat down this well-trodden path: Twain’s Huck Finn,…
Addictive Storytelling
The other day I downloaded a book from Amazon onto my Kindle and began to read. About 50 pages in, I suddenly got a vague sense of deja vu, and as I read further, I kept getting that feeling and it kept getting stronger. Finally, about halfway through I couldn’t escape the realization that I’d…
My Top Ten, Revisited
I recently came across a workshop presentation I gave many, many years ago on the “Top Ten Things to Do to Sell Your First Novel.” It was interesting to see what I thought were the keys to publishing success back then: 1) Finish your book. This seems obvious, but I still encounter writers who get…