Writing Children’s Dialog: How to Get It Right

This article by Jessi Rita Hoffman was first published on Jane Friedman's blog at www.JaneFriedman.com. Ms. Friedman is the former publisher of Writer's Digest. Are you struggling with the task of writing children's dialog? Some of the worst dialog ever written, in both film and fiction, has been dialog for kids. We all know children are not just miniature grownups—they ... Read More

Think Twice Before Writing a Novel

Are you working on writing a novel, perhaps your first? Do you plan to finish it, then bring in an editor for help with the final polish? My experience editing dozens of books by first-time novelists suggests you might be making a mistake. Most of the novels I critique are full of serious problems the author had no idea existed. That’s because it’s hard to see the weaknesses in your own writing. Each time I get a manuscript of this sort, I lament the fact that the author didn’t approach an editor early on in the writing, instead of after investing hundreds of hours in something that now must essentially be reconstructed, often from the ground up …

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Adrenalize Your Action Scene!

Whether you write YA, romance, fantasy, or actual thrillers, there are times in any novel where an action scene is called for. These scenes can be among the hardest to write. What runs like an exciting movie in your imagination can end up clunking along on the page, causing even your own eyes to glaze over. So what goes wrong in action-scene writing? Surprisingly, it’s usually not what is missing in an action scene that’s the problem—it’s what is there that needs to be removed …

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How to Write a Moving Love Scene

One of the hardest scenes to successfully write is the love scene. In your mind you may picture a moving, romantic interlude, but down on paper, you find it reads like melodrama—or worse. This can spell disaster for your novel, particularly if the entire book is building to this scene and it needs to be stupendous to carry the story …

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Authors: Beware the Fake-Quotation Trap!

For authors, the Internet offers broad vistas of knowledge and opportunity, but scattered in between are a few beds of quicksand. One of these is the fake-quotation quagmire: the growing trend of popular “quotation websites” to feature made-up quotes. The quagmire deepens each time a self-publishing author casually decides to decorate her writing with “something inspirational” …

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