Category: Craft of Writing
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How to Weave Believable Technology into Your YA Dystopian Novel (Part 1)
I’m in the process of closing my current series and beginning a new one, and I’m thrilled at the chance to create a new world from scratch. My next series will be dystopian YA, and in preparation I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the kinds of technology that I want to incorporate into the…
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Best Places to Advertise Your $0.99 Ebook Promotion
As my adventures in advertising and marketing my self-published books continue, I thought I’d share some lessons from my latest $0.99 promotion of the first book in The Conjurors Series. For this attempt, I clustered five different advertisements within one week in an attempt to push up my ranking and visibility on Amazon, particularly for certain…
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What’s Your Story’s Logline?
In the writing world, there is a lot of talk about creating stories that are high concept, especially if you’re writing YA fantasy, like I am. Basically, if your story is high concept it has a compelling idea that can be summed up succinctly. (The Writer’s Store does a great job of explaining the concept…
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Sweating Your Way to Writerly Greatness
When an athletes are wildly successful, no one questions that in addition to talent, they have put in countless hours practicing, relentlessly drilling themselves on specific maneuvers and training their bodies to be in prime condition. When a writer is wildly successful, the reverse is true. Most people assume that great writers achieve success because of…
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When the First Book in Your Self-Published Series Is the Weakest
Once upon a time I decided to write a young adult fantasy novel. I spent hours plotting, writing, editing, rewriting. There were dozens of beta readers, five major rewrites of the entire story (and countless minor rewrites), and the help of a professional editor. The result was a decent book that I’m proud of, the…
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How to Keep the Lovers in Your YA Novel Apart
I’m not going to try to deny it. I love a great love story. Romeo and Juliet, Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy, Katniss and Peeta. The problem as a YA writer, though, is that there are only so many good reasons that an author has to keep the lovers in the story apart. One of…
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The Pros and Cons of Cursing in Young Adult Literature
After six books that were curse free, I’ll never forget my surprise near the end of the final Harry Potter book, when Mrs. Weasley calls the woman who killed her son a bitch. I remember wondering – can she do that? Of course, she can and she did. But that’s J. K. Rowling. Should you, in…
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How to Kill the Villian in Your YA Fantasy Series (with Style)
The time has come, now that I’m wrapping up my YA/Middle Grade fantasy series, The Conjurors, to say goodbye to my favorite character – the villain. I hope it’s not a spoiler to say that he’s going to get the axe. Unfortunately, his actions have been so unforgivable that I can’t risk leaving him alive in…
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How to End Your Self-Published Book Series
As I begin plotting the final book in The Conjurors Series, I noticed that it is by far the hardest book to write. It feels as though the stakes for my protagonist have never been higher, and it can be intimidating trying to ensure that she lives up her potential. Faced with such high expectations,…
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When to Include an Epilogue in Your Novel
Unlike prologues (which I covered in last week’s post) epilogues are a much less controversial concept in the writing community. Everyone from J.K. Rowling to James Dashner uses epilogues to wrap up loose ends and generally give a novel a complete finish. But I would argue that epilogues are just as likely to be abused…