When I help my clients prepare the pitch materials for their novel, it’s not just the query and synopsis we focus on—it’s their opening pages. Because it doesn’t matter how snappy that query letter is, or how promising that synopsis reads: If the opening pages of the story itself don’t suck the agent or editor in, those pages won’t have … Read More
5 Signs You’re Ready to Pitch Your Work
Apparently, it was Hippocrates who first said something to the effect of “Life is short, art is long”–but it could just as easily have been a fiction writer. Chances are, if you’re writing fiction now, this art form got a hold of you when you were just a kid, swept up in the magic of books that transported you to … Read More
What Character Arc Isn’t
I write a lot about character arc, and I talk a lot about it with my clients. Because if there’s a magic bullet for creating a novel that sucks the reader in, holds her attention, and ultimately makes her feel like it was worth the 6+ hours it took to read that book, character arc is it. Many writers are … Read More
Why can it be so difficult to improve old work?
If you’ve been with me a while, you know that I’m revising a collection of short fiction, with the goal of getting it ready to submit by the end of the year. Some of the stories in this collection are new, and some are old–and right now, I’m revising an old one, set at the boarding school for the arts … Read More
