Category: Writing Craft
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Tips for Providing Helpful Feedback and Critiques
We’ve all received unhelpful feedback on our work. Maybe it was too vague to be actionable. Maybe it was so blunt it was cruel. Maybe it was just wrong. Maybe the critiquer didn’t understand what we were trying to do, or they just didn’t like it for purely subjective reasons.…
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How to Write Compelling First Pages
It is a truth universally acknowledged that the first pages of your book must be astoundingly good. Literary agents often only request 5-10 pages, and if your first page or two aren’t gripping enough, they might not even read beyond them. Unfair? Perhaps not. After all, when readers are browsing…
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Evoking Emotion
One of the most powerful aspects of fiction is that when it’s done well, we feel what the characters are feeling. When the characters are afraid, we’re afraid. They make us giddy with new love or angry at injustice. When we stop reading, we feel like we’ve had a cathartic…
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Cultivating Voice: How to Immerse Readers in Your Character’s Mind
Agents and editors often talk about how they love a manuscript because of the voice. But what is this nebulous thing called voice? And how do you give your story a stronger one? “Voice” in storytelling can be hard to define, mostly because it’s so complex. On the surface, it’s…
Jodi Herlick 