Helping Writers Go from Unpublished to Published
Would you like to find new readers? How about a pool of 116 million people in the United States alone? If that’s not enough incentive, how about a worldwide pool of 383 million people?
How do you reach these wondrous potential readers? Through their ears. They’re podcast listeners!
[Read more…] about Find New Readers Through Podcasts
Last month over at DebraLButterfield.com I spoke about some of the subtle lies Satan plants in our hearts without us even knowing it. And in actuality, I’m on a cleaning binge. I’m working to clean out the lies I have unwittingly embraced and that have kept me from enjoying the abundant life Jesus promised.
A lie I’d like to peel apart today is “If only one person is changed by __________, then it was worth all it.” You fill in the blank. Changed by:
What would be on your list?
[Read more…] about The Subtle Lie of Only One Person
Today’s guest post is by author L.A. Darroch, a Christian author with a heart for writing about the persecuted church and other stories that touch the hearts of readers for God’s glory. She seeks to use her writing to encourage readers to “Speak Life.” She credits her late father with introducing her to a passion for reading. Darroch lives in Winnipeg, Canada, and is owned by a very smart cat named Bathsheba.
[Read more…] about 5 Tips to Add Other Cultures to Your Story Without Leaving the Country
Footnotes and endnotes tend to be cumbersome for most writers. Most certainly, I keep my Chicago Manual of Style handy when I’m editing notes.
To avoid the weightiness of correct formatting, I like to cite my sources within the body of my text when I can. But I realize there is a time for notes.
The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th Edition, says this: “Ethics, copyright laws, and courtesy to readers require authors to identify the sources of direct quotations or paraphrases and of any facts or opinions not generally known or easily checked.”
In other words, giving credit where credit is due. Using someone else’s words or ideas and claiming them as your own is called plagiarism—serious business that could land you in jail.
[Read more…] about How to Handle Footnotes and EndnotesSentence structure is a riveting subject, don’t you think so?
Okay, maybe not. Me either.
Let me ask you this instead: When you’re engrossed in a book, do you notice sentence structure? If you’re like me, you don’t notice it at all unless…it becomes monotonous.
Last month, I looked at pacing. In that post, I talked about how sentence length affects your story’s pacing. This month, I’ll examine actual sentence structure. No, this isn’t going to be a grammar lesson. Yes, I realize this may be boring, but it’s important. I’ll do my best to interject some humor.
[Read more…] about Sentence Structure and How It Impacts Your Reader
“Pace yourself.”
In my running days in the Marine Corps, I heard this imperative regularly. Perhaps you’ve heard it too. It means managing how quickly or slowly you run your distance. If you plan to run a mile, you don’t run the whole distance at a sprint like you would the 100-yard dash.
You can apply this same principle in establishing the pacing of your story and each scene. Not every scene is a dash; not every scene is a slow walk. Over the full length of the story, the pace will vary. But your story must have a continuous forward progression.
“Nearly all narratives…require forward motion and change over time, whether that change occurs in the narrator/characters or in the reader’s perception of the narrator or characters.” ~ Laurie Alberts, Showing & Telling
We want to know the story is moving forward to an end result.
[Read more…] about Pacing — What It Is and How to Manage It
Writers ask lots of questions, and the writing community pays it forward quite well.
I see many questions on a regular basis. One is “what program do you use to format your manuscript?” These writers aren’t talking about how to format their manuscript for presenting to agents, editors, or publishers, but programs to format the manuscript for actual book publishing.
Amazon accepts several file formats for ebooks. Here’s a list. Now that they accept epub files, writers don’t have to fret over converting their files to mobi. That makes things a lot easier!
[Read more…] about 7 Manuscript Formatting Programs
Image by Aravind kumar from PixabayLast year while I was stumbling around in the midst of having my blog shifted to a new domain, my blog fell off the cliff.
In early 2020, I decided to shift my writing website from one domain to another. I hired Marta Goertzen (Trail Guide Webworks) to do all the migrating and such, and just as she got started the world went into COVID lock down.
Long story short, Marta hit some snags, and it took months to resolve because of the lock down. During this migration time, I got out of the habit of writing 2-3 posts a month and failed at starting again.
[Read more…] about Scaling the Cliff aka Starting Again