Writers Blog

All of us are familiar with the concept of a novel, a story of length that describes fictional characters and events. Examples include Great Expectations, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Great Gatsby, Fight Club (yes, it was a novel first), The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Lovely Bones, and Gone Girl. But...

Technical editing concerns the review of a text written about a topic of a technical nature. Editors apply several levels of technical editing, ranging from basic proofreading to substantive editing. Although the editing levels differ slightly between organizations and institutions, they can generally...

Let’s talk about self-editing, and why it’s important to authors. It’s really important to understand the basics of looking at your story arc. Look for the five key scenes. Looking at the pacing and the balance of the characters, the plots, and the settings. We must evaluate them scene by scene.  We...

What Is Narrative Nonfiction? Narrative nonfiction is a fairly new term being introduced as a genre of writing, but its individual elements are not new at all. It blends factual events with entertainment, setting it apart from academic nonfiction and journalism, which are factual but not generally entertaining,...

One of the key decisions you make when writing a novel is deciding what perspective, or point of view (POV) it should have. More simply, who do you want to use to tell the story? Who gets to hog the narrative, dominate the dialogue or inner thought and direct the plot? Traditionally, the choice is between...