How to: Motivate your characters

The art of adding conflict to fiction and motivating your characters has been summed up thusly: “Put your character up a tree and throw rocks at him.”  (Or her.  Or them.  Obviously.)    Upping the stakes for your main character adds dramatic tension to your plot, whether you’re writing a sweet contemporary romance or a…

How to: Asking random strangers for information

I’ve been on the receiving end of a lot of requests for information in my time, almost always having to do with martial arts or writing, and for the most part I’m happy to help.  I’d be a little disappointed if all of my efforts as a writer led to echoing silence.  But sometimes I…

Things that make me smile

A friend mentioned to my daughter that she was turning fifty later this year.  My daughter paused, then said, “Why?”  Which I think is an excellent question.  Instead of my chronological age, think I’ll turn 39 this year, or even 29.  Because apparently, getting older is a choice.

Ready . . . or not?

I’ve been reading on agent blogs lately that they’re getting a lot of submissions that aren’t “ready.”  I take this to mean there are easily identified problems in the manuscript that could have been corrected before it was sent out — from inconsistencies in the plot to typos.   My experience on the other side of…

How to: Motivation

Yesterday I was having a bit of trouble getting motivated, for the usual reasons – a slew of rejections, a couple of them unexpected and dispiriting, a bunch of pitches that had obviously wandered into the black hole of non-response, a rainy dark morning and a kid who wanted to go to the pool and…

How to: Finding out what editors want

In a recent post on pitching editors, a reader asked, “How do you ask editors what they want?”  Anyone who’s been pitching for more than ten minutes knows this question is more complicated than it looks because you can’t just send a random editor a letter saying, “Tell me what you want and I’ll pitch…