Today I got out a rag and cleaned off my white board. The wide open surface and blissfully erasable markers make it the perfect tool for me to see my story as one big picture. Once I have it there, I can see where the action falls and whether events should come sooner or later. [...]
Hearing Your Story
June 14, 2010 – 9:37 pm
Writing a new story is like inhabiting a new world. It doesn’t matter whether you’re writing about high school crushes or aliens or high school crushes on aliens, there are strangers you’ve never met, unfamiliar landscapes, traditions you don’t yet understand. And the trick is, you don’t just need to get to know this new [...]
Eating Paste
March 4, 2009 – 12:57 pm
Okay… maybe not eating it. So I finished my revision… now what? As a way to deal with the dismal No Man’s Land that lurks between revisions and new projects, I’ve been getting crafty. This past September at the SCBWI Working Writers’ Retreat, the creative Julie Williams gave us some unusual ideas about how to [...]
The Rules
July 14, 2008 – 1:53 pm
A while ago, I had a friend read the opening chapters to my novel. He was very supportive, but he said that there wasn’t enough momentum to my story. Not enough momentum?! What does he know? He’s an illustrator. He reads picture books and graphic novels. He doesn’t know ANYTHING about young adult books! Okay. [...]
Books of the Week: Issue Books
November 9, 2007 – 3:00 am
Stories are, above all, a way for us to understand the world. When we see a character having the same feelings as us, going through the same experiences, reacting in the same way, we discover we are not alone. Lying, teasing, being frustrated, being jealous of a friend, does not make us a bad person. [...]
Books of the Week:Terrible, horrible, no good, very bad characters
October 26, 2007 – 1:19 pm
“The night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind and another, his mother called him “WILD THING!” and Max said “I’LL EAT YOU UP!” so he was sent to bed without eating anything.” – Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are What is it that makes wild, stubborn, grumpy, characters so [...]
Channeling Faye
August 13, 2007 – 1:31 pm
I’m brain deep in character development, right now. Unfortunately it’s for Faye, the main character of a novel I’ve been writing on and off for 4 years. Same novel. From the very beginning, I knew Faye. Who she was. What she wanted. The concept in my head was brilliantly clear. Unfortunately, my writing wasn’t. After [...]
