From Rick: Here’s the problem: Advice on writing is easy to come by, but who should you listen to for the most reliable advice? What do you do when the advice is contradictory? —Should you listen to the bestselling authors
Read moreFrom Rick: In Part 2, I talked about two ways in which writers may overwrite: —unnecessary use of characters’ names —repeated words and phrases In this last part I’ll finish up this series by talking about three other ways writers
Read moreFrom Rick: Way back in the Stone Age (pre-Internet), book reviews were done mostly by literary professionals, or by those supposedly in a position to give educated opinions. Individual readers had very limited public voice in such things. These were
Read moreFrom Rick: What do you do when you’ve been asked to read and comment, or review (or edit) a piece where the writing sucks and there’s graceful no way to bow out? First off, suggesting that someone’s writing sucks sounds
Read moreFrom Rick: This week’s post is going to be short and sweet. I’ve put together some tidbits and tips that I hope readers will find of some benefit. In a recent Kris Rusch blog post, she hit upon one of
Read moreguest post by Lance Taubold (reposted with permission from 13Thirty Books and with minor edits) Writers, like most artists, are by nature, insecure. We want everyone to like what we’ve written. Let me correct that. We want everyone to love
Read moreFrom Rick: Someone in a large online group that I belong to recently asked, “How many beta readers should one use?” The answers varied: 2-3, 5-7, a dozen or more, but the consensus was that too few may not give
Read moreFrom Rick: One problem writers often struggle with is how much information to divulge to the reader at various places in a story. I’m not referring only to descriptions, but also to story information. You don’t want to overload–or bore–the
Read more…but need to listen to. From Rick: As a follow-up to Scott’s discussion last week, I’m going to use a real example. In one of the chat groups I belong to, author X complained about getting yet another 1-star review
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