Ask the Experts
Why Fact-Checking Can Make Your Fiction Stronger, and How to Find the Right People for the Job Your manuscript is finished; you have taken your beta readers’ input and made changes suggested by your agent or content editor. You are ready to set your manuscript aside until publish day, right? Well, not quite. Whether your […]
Exploring the History Behind Three Idioms You May Be Using in Your Writing
Exploring the History Behind Three Common English Sayings As writers, we love to play with words. We twirl them around on our tongues and pop them out in various ways. Sometimes we cajole; other times we inspire or inform. We create jokes to entertain or puns that bring on groans. Occasionally, we use phrases we […]
Everything the Only Child Needs to Know to Write Realistic Siblings
Writing Realistic Stories about Siblings The author Leo Tolstoy famously wrote in his book Anna Karenina, “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” I would change this to add that, whether happy or unhappy, all children are unique in their own way—but for children who grow up in […]
Don’t Trip on the Cobblestones: Getting Historical Fiction Right
So you have decided to write a historical novel. Were you impressed by the fifty-year scope in Amor Towles’ A Gentleman in Moscow? Or perhaps you were intrigued by the spy craft in The Rose Code by Kate Quinn? Historical Fiction is expansive, stretching across time periods and crossing paths with several other genres. Its […]