You are working on a project and you have a nagging sense that the book is not going well. You work on your text, and you change, this, that, and the other thing. Small stuff, really. Been there. Done that. The negative nagging persists. If you are a reader—and I do not know how you
Molly, a seventh grader from Santé Fe, New Mexico, asks, “I want to write suspenseful books. How do you make them that way?” Molly, there are many ways to answer this question. First, your plot has to have an aura of potential disaster, danger, or threat. While there is nothing wrong with making that danger concrete,
It may seem bizarre to suggest it, but when writing a novel, one of the most crucial things to have is memory, memory of what you yourself have written. There are simple mix-ups, such as when a character says to another character, “Let’s meet at seven, “ and you forget and have the meeting at
In early March, I had a Skype visit with a school in the Down East Maine town of Pownal. (They told me it was minus seven degrees that day, “and that’s not including the wind-chill factor.”) A student asked which character in which of my books, was most like me when I was a kid.
Question: How long does it take before you like what you are writing? Answer: it can take a long time. Professional writers write for many reasons. Not the least of them is to make a living. There is a famous writing story about Charles Dickens. His publication, Household Words, had been running a serial, which was
Last October I had an idea for a new book. I did what I usually do: I began to read about the subject, trying to grab hold of the idea in a more concrete fashion. After a couple of months of random, not very focused thought, I took my usual next step. I tried writing
I am working on a book, which, for want of a better term, aspires to be a page-turner. Full of suspense and surprises, it’s meant to be a galloping narrative. When one writes this kind of book, there are always vital issues of pacing. One of the specific concerns is how a chapter is constructed—not
The other day I was visiting a high school class. When I was taking questions, a ninth grader asked me how I go about putting symbolism and hidden meanings in my books. When I replied that I do not put hidden meanings and symbolism in my books, the boy’s response was, “But my teacher is
I was just reviewing a new manuscript with an editor. Her primary comment was, “It needs to be tighter.” It would be easy to say that she meant, “the text needs to be cut.” However, to me, tighter means pace, drive, tempo—overall, the forward moving energy of the story. This is particularly necessary for today’s
Over the years, I have written a number of short stories. There are two collections, Strange Happenings (five stories) and What Do Fish Have to Do with Anything? (seven stories). Now and again, I have contributed to various thematic anthologies, some seven (I think) in number, including When I Was Your Age. A few years