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What the novel needs

“With all your expe­ri­ence writ­ing,” some­one asked me, “and if your new nov­el is going bad­ly, do you always know what to do?” The short answer is no. More­over, I would sug­gest, if the work is not going well, you do not need to know what to do. You need to know what the nov­el needs.

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Comprehending the language of writing

One of the rea­sons read­ing and writ­ing is so dif­fi­cult to teach in today’s schools is because it is not com­mon­ly under­stood that writ­ing is a unique form of the Eng­lish lan­guage. It is, in gen­er­al, dif­fer­ent from the way Eng­lish is spo­ken. It is often dif­fer­ent from the var­i­ous ways Eng­lish is spo­ken, in

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It has to work both ways

There is one aspect of pro­fes­sion­al pub­lish­ing that is rarely talked about, the ten­sion between pub­lish­ing and the writer. I am not speak­ing here about prob­lems in mar­ket­ing, roy­al­ties, or any of the busi­ness prob­lems that always come up, which have their own strains. I am ref­er­enc­ing the clash of egos between writ­ers and editors.

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The Boy Detective

In the late Nine­teenth Cen­tu­ry, and ear­ly Twen­ti­eth Cen­tu­ry, because of its prox­im­i­ty to Ellis Island, one of the major land­ing sites for immi­grants, thou­sands upon thou­sands of peo­ple came to New York City. As it hap­pened, many of these peo­ple found ten­e­ment hous­ing in Man­hat­tan, around and about what is called the Low­er East

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Nothing But the Truth

From playwright to novelist

When I was a senior in high school, I kept a diary, the only time I have real­ly done so. On March 28, 1955, (I was sev­en­teen) an entry reads; “Well, I final­ly said it out loud. I intend to stay with the the­atre. In the the­atre, one can be every­thing in the world—write—that’s for

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Top 15 most frequently asked questions

I made my first school vis­it in 1970. Since that time, there have been count­less such vis­its, in class­rooms, audi­to­ri­ums, and these days via Skype. I have been in front of audi­ences at many, many con­fer­ences as well. All venues vary enor­mous­ly, in both loca­tion (every state) and a few coun­tries abroad. Despite the variations,

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“My story was not strong enough …”

A strug­gling writer recent­ly wrote to me: “As most rejec­tion let­ters for oth­er man­u­scripts tell me, ‘[My] sto­ry was not strong enough.’ Nei­ther was this one. I don’t think the read­ers will care.” What would I advise? A rather daunt­ing ques­tion. Years ago, I was teach­ing a children’s lit­er­a­ture writ­ing course for adults, an evening noncredit

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What color were Henry the Seventh’s eyes? 

My young read­ers often ask me about the details in my nov­els, every­thing from where I find them, to how do I choose what to include. These ques­tions come up often in the con­text of appre­ci­a­tion. I have rarely heard a com­plaint that there are too many or unnec­es­sary details in my books. (Edi­tors tell

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Writing groups

Rox­ane asks how I feel about writ­ing groups. To begin, I have nev­er been part of a writ­ing group in any for­mal sense. That said, from the ear­ly days of my writ­ing, I did share work with friends and fel­low writ­ers, but it was nev­er orga­nized. That shar­ing was very impor­tant to me. I think writing

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Guidelines for That Reader

Ask­ing some­one to read—for the first time—something you have writ­ten is always a ner­vous mak­ing time. Over the years, I have devel­oped some rules for myself when doing this. Choose one per­son. Too many read­ers can be con­fus­ing. Make sure your MS is in stan­dard read­able form. (I recall some­one once send­ing me 200 pages of

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