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  Learn to Write Conflict in Children’s Books

  680 readersBy Lisa BrunelIf you want to learn to write children's books, you should absolutely start by reading some of them, this is because after you have read a few, there are a few things that snap into focus. The first thing that you will likely notice is th...

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  How to Write a Book Series

  1348 readersIt was a strange thing. There I was writing books about teens struggling with alcoholic parents and depression, when an idea for ninja cheerleaders popped into my head. See—strange? Turns out that idea became The Naughty List, my first young adult novel (released in February 2010). But then things got even weirder… it became a series.       To

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  Lying About People: Developing Fictional Characters

  530 readersby Todd RutherfordCharacter development is one of the main keys to writing a successful novel. If your characters are not believable and well rounded, your readers will not be able to keep their interest in your story. This is true whether your story i...

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  Is Quirky a Good Thing?

  819 readersIs it ever worthwhile to de-quirk a novel?My book has one seriously odd character: a home-schooled narrator. The consensus among replying agents, however, is that the voice is just too "quirky". Fair enough, but now what?Is a complete re-write in order? And a re-query to follow?Or should I trash the manuscript, hit the bottle, and

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  Should You Start With Plot or Character(s)?

  905 readers Whether plot or character comes first when composing a novel is sort of like the chicken and egg thing. It greatly depends on the author’s point of view. Plot and character are so entwined that it’s often hard to even separate the two. Like all elements of a novel-dialogue, exposition, description, pacing-plot and character are woven throughout. I think

• First Steps in Plotting a Novel

  327 readersAre plots really "a dime a dozen"? Your eBook: Click here to download the Basic English Grammar ebook.

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  Where’s Your Conflict?

  2781 readersYou may have had the experience of picking up a book or an article and being bored silly without quite knowing why. The content is certainly interesting. You can see how it could be a fascinating story or subject. But somehow, inexorably, you begin to yawn. What happened here? The book had potential! How did it

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  What Are the Seeds of Your Story?

  1070 readersUnless you’re highly gifted, the stories you write aren’t likely to just fall out of your brain and land intact on the page in front of you. Instead, we writers have a tendency to start with just one small story element. A seed. From there, all the other necessary bits and pieces evolve until we have

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  Literary Villains We Love To Hate

  918 readersWhat characters do you love to hate? I came across this post on the 50 Greatest Villains in Literature, and was able to identify several of my favourites in the list. It got me thinking–what makes us hate villains, and what makes us love them? Villains must be motivated to do the things they do. Motivations might

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  Cemetery Gates: Developing a Plot

  425 readersby Todd RutherfordPlot development is an area that many first time writers ignore. They have a story inside them that needs to come out and it is all too easy to make this the focus, instead of creating a plot that has a firm beginning, middle and end....