Techniques
Pain-free Ways to Cut Your Manuscript
I just finished writing an article for an organization I belong to, geared to a specific magazine and when I was finished I had 2,355 words. Great! Of course the magazine’s max is only 1,500 words. But that’s the way…
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3 Writing Killers – What NOT to Write
Everyone has a way TO write–what about the key ways to NOT write? Here you go: Don’t meander – If you want to enjoy writing without a focus or goal or plan, fine, but write it for yourself, not for…
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The Overlooked Key to Selling a Book – Blurbs
It is called a blurb, which doesn’t even start to give this package of words the respect it should! It would need to be called “The Almighty” or “Atom Bomb” to give it a title with the impact of its…
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Character Ages in Children’s Stories
If you write for children, have you clearly indicated the age of your characters somewhere early in the story? Writers sometimes think that leaving that fact vague allows the young readers to believe the characters are their own age, whether…
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The Squiggles of Punctuation: Colons and Semicolons
Don’t be afraid of punctuation marks! They are just squiggles on a page that are special tools made just for you: the writer. Two punctuation marks seem to be a particular bug-a-boo for writers.
COLONS
A colon allows writers…
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Creating the Perfect Novel Title–or Not
Two of my writer-clients recently had the same problem: They chose the perfect title for their book, only to discover it already graces the cover of a published book. Others are agonizing over finding ANY title! What to do?
And…
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