When you think of your story’s plot, it is helpful to think of a story’s parts to help you see the big picture and help you to begin to work out your story’s plot. All stories have beginnings, middles, and endings. They also have inciting incidents, midpoints, and climaxes. Regardless of the genre of book … Read more
As mentioned last time, plot is the significant events and incidents that happen in a story and how these events relate to each other. But how do you create a plot? Can’t you just string some events together for your character to muddle through? You could do that, but that story structure generally results in … Read more
What is plot? Plot is what happens in your story. Plot is the way you organize the events that occur in the novel. Plot is your story line. Plot is the direction of a story’s main events and incidents and how they relate to one another. Let’s start with thinking about plot as a simple … Read more
I was recently at Colorado Gold, which is a conference geared toward writers wanting to improve their craft and writing skill. It was a great conference attended by 300+ writers. While there, I chatted with people and I noticed that for some of them, the concept of plot seemed to be an afterthought. These were … Read more
It\’s summer which is a reminder for me to evaluate my writing progress. While I don\’t make New Year\’s Resolutions at the beginning of the year, I do make a list of goals. I never achieve them perfectly, but I do move closer to achieving them over time, and I do the work step-by-step to … Read more
We’ve had a substantial number of submissions at Literary Wanderlust lately. We always take the time to read every submission with the goal of finding some really great stories to contract and turn into books. Well, that’s not actually true. There is one category of submissions that we reject without reading—books with exorbitant word counts. What? … Read more
You know how it is. You are some place, maybe waiting in a long line, or at the car repair shop. You strike up a conversation with someone. You talk about the wait time, or the weather, or the food, or some safe topic. Inevitably, the conversation will get around to the business of what … Read more
Sometimes when I am reading the slush pile (my submission inbox for Literary Wanderlust), I come across a really good story idea but the story winds up being boring. Usually, it’s because the story does not contain any plot twists to pique my interest. What is a plot twist? A plot twist is an unexpected, … Read more
Recently my press was mentioned in an author’s listing for publishers seeking submissions. It’s a great thing, truly. I am not complaining. The more submissions the better. The number of queries we received (so far) in the month of March is 75% more than the number of queries we receive in the month of February. … Read more
If you want to be traditionally published, at some point you will have to pitch your novel. Here are some tips.