By Carol Lerner I’ve been reading all kinds of fiction lately. This is a good thing, as for years I’ve had difficulty finding fiction that kept my interest. I’ve finally figured out what makes me stick with a story-it’s the overall aura, the “feeling” the words evoke, or, as I like to say, the fragrance. It’s that which moves something …
Three Magic Phrases for a Writer
by Richard Mabry Early in my road to writing, author and teacher Alton Gansky taught me to ask a magic question: “What if?” One of his books began when he noted the presence of a military installation in a deserted location and asked himself, “What if that base suddenly disappeared?” The result was an excellent book. And it began with …
Making Research Fun
By Donna Schlachter I’ve seen the way some authors’ eyes nearly roll up into their heads at the word, “research”. After all, that’s just dry, boring stuff. We’re always told to ‘write what we know’. If we have to research a topic, we aren’t writing what we know. I used to write what I knew. My first yet-unpublished novel was …
Writing for “The One”
By Kariss Lynch Every Tuesday night, three thousand young adults across Dallas come for a little get together we call The Porch. For three years now, I’ve volunteered, entering the worship center to fulfill my assigned task of shepherding people to seats and hopefully to a closer relationship with the Lord. Those of us who volunteer have a saying, a …
Writing Effective Book Club Discussion Questions
By Sarah Sundin Book clubs. As readers, we delight in socializing with book-lovers. As writers, we delight in connecting with avid readers. Since I belonged to a book club long before I was published, I knew the importance of a good set of discussion questions. While some groups fall naturally into discussion, some don’t, and good questions stimulate conversation. I …
Breaking the Rules
by Laura McClellan Any novelist who studies craft reads a lot about the rules: Show, don’t tell. Avoid adverbs. No head-hopping. These rules have developed to help us create fiction that welcomes the reader in, with no barriers to the reader’s participation in the story. I recently reread Francine Rivers’s Redeeming Love, one of my favorite novels ever. The characters …
Real Civil War Spies
by Mary Ellis While researching my latest romance, The Lady and the Officer, I discovered several real-life spies whose lives provided plenty of inspiration. Probably the most famous Confederate spy was Belle Boyd. At 17, Belle was arrested for shooting a Union soldier who had broken into the family’s home. Though Union officers cleared her of all charges, they watched …
Permission to Noodle
by Anne Mateer Confession time. For all my aversion to math, I thrive on measurable productivity. A number of words written. A number of pages revised. The number of books read in a week, month or year. The amount of time spent research-or even cleaning house or running errands. It all signals productivity. A worthwhile expenditure of time. And yet, …
Genetics-Based Grammarianism
By Michelle Arch In a world of tweeting, texting, chattering, status updates, desktop messaging, flash fiction, and the ubiquitous shrunken novel, rhetoric and the art of epic articulation, sadly, are no longer appreciated and extolled. Murky millennial jargon and cryptic acronyms have replaced the precision of entire phrases and sentences, leaving some of us to wonder if the writer is …
Research Surprises
by Susan Lyttek One of the first things I do when I get an idea for a story is research. I enjoy the process. More often than not, its results surprise me, taking the story in a different direction or changing the focus. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I often approach a book project with preconceived …