What Writers Need to Know about Book Contracts

 
 

When you sign a contract with a publisher you are granting them the rights to publish your work in one or many formats. These include print formats, film, television, audio, CD, and DVD rights, not to mention regional and language rights. It isn’t wise to sell your rights all at once (called “All Rights”), unless [...]

The Novelist: Sensual Writing

 

We have five major senses and several minor ones we aren’t even consciously aware of. The major ones include sight, hearing, smelling, touch, and taste.

In the April 2000 issue of Fiction Writer Janet Fitch, author of White Oleander, tells us that we are biologically and psychologically designed “for intense experience in a richly sensual world. [...]

The Novelist: Finding Your Muse

I often get asked how and where I draw my inspiration from. How do I find my muse? And how do I keep it? (i.e.,, how do I defeat “writer’s block”?).
The Muses, in Greek mythology, are a sisterhood of goddesses or spirits who embody the arts and inspire the creation process with their graces through [...]

Five Ways to Improve Language in Your Writing

Here are five things that I guarantee will improve your story:
1. Voice: This is the feel and tone that applies to the overall book (narrative voice) and to each character. The overall voice is dictated by your audience, who you’re writing for: youth, adults, etc. It’s important to give each character a distinctive “voice” (including [...]

The Novelist: Common Pitfalls of the Beginning Writer

Have you ever wondered how an editor decides not to read your cherished tome past the second paragraph of the first page and has pegged you as a beginning writer? This used to really bug me… Well, as a published author and occasional mentor, I do from time to time read manuscripts (please don’t send [...]

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