Plenty of ground and great stuff to cover today, so let’s jump right in.
CRAFT
Rachelle Gardner’s (@RachelleGardner) right when she says there aren’t very many articles on Foreshadowing out there in the blogosphere, so hers today, on that and “its black-sheep cousin, telegraphing,” is a very useful review of what they are, how they differ, and when to use or not use foreshadowing. Check it out.
KM Weiland’s (@KMWeiland) piece on How to Keep Your Fight Scenes Interesting is another one covering a rarely-discussed topic. As she notes, maybe it’s a surprise that a fight scene could be boring, but it can, and she offers a couple of easy techniques to keep your reader dodging those flailing fists along with your hero.
Our last selection today comes from Kelly Nichols, one half of the team who goes by the pen name P J Parrish. “Heed this advice now!” she warned desperately on The Kill Zone is a hoot, particularly if you, like me, are death on overusing adverbs and on dialog tags that explain too much. Tell us how many adverbs you found in Kelly’s post in the Comments below. Not all of them end in –ly, by the way.
WRITING TOOLS
Keith Cronin (@KeithCronin) loves how-to books, at least when they deal with writing. Who knew? Well, now we do, and in his Confessions of a “How-To” Junkie on Writer Unboxed he lists a baker’s half-dozen (OK, 7) of his favorites. Like me, you’ve probably read some of the books on his list but not others, and agree with some of his selections and not others. No matter, the main post and the comments are a good resource list for your own future reading.
Mike Fleming (@hiveword) guest posts about, or perhaps I should say, advertises his new—and free—online fiction organizing software called Hiveword on The Bookshelf Muse. I haven’t tried this tool and don’t know anyone who has, but if nothing else, Mike makes a case for planning before writing in Plan Ahead With The HiveWord Writing Tool.
SOCIAL MEDIA AND MARKETING
Joel Friedlander (@jfbookman) provides some very practical and QuickTips for Contests & Giveaways on The Book Designer. These ideas take away some of the mystery about marketing one’s book on line.
THE WRITING LIFE
At a recent writers’ meeting, we got to talking about the member of one group who seemed to be using the group as a place to vent her frustrations and stresses with a part of her life. She claimed, the group leader said, to want to write a book about what she was going through. While it seemed at first that she wanted to approach Writing as Catharsis, we learned later that maybe that wasn’t her primary motivation. Nathan Bransford (@NathanBransford) takes on this topic in his latest post. While not all writing is, or needs to be, cathartic, if done for the right reasons, it can help a writer make sense of his or her world.
BUSINESS
Today’s last post is no surprise. Last time I wrote about the settlement between Google and some of the “Big 6” publishers over Google’s scanning of books. Yesterday Victoria Strauss (@VictoriaStrauss) posted on Writer Beware® Blogs Writers Slam Secrecy of Book Publishers’ Deal With Google. The post is mostly a copy of a joint press release from the American Society of Journalists and Authors, the National Writers Union, and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America about their letter to the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, asking them to reopen an investigation on possible violations of federal law. The issue is still whether authors are going to be paid for their work if a reader accesses it through Google’s Book Search project. As I’ve noted before, this story is far from over.
Have you found any great stuff out there on the web? Share it in the Comments below.
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