Tag: The Green Mile

Time as a Literary Device: Unpacking the Parallel Timeline

One reason we might be tempted to use a flashback is to explain or to expound to artificially prop up weak characterization or a weak plot (the training wheel flashback). This is what good editors will cut. Then there is the other way to use time and that is time as a literary device. This is when our …

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Pirate Codes & Writing Rules—When is a Flashback a Literary Device?

If I give you guys the BASICS and explain WHY editors, agents and readers almost always dislike flashbacks, you know what is distressing about a flashback so you can avoid the pitfalls if you choose to employ a flashback.

Structure Part 5–Keeping Focused & Nailing the Pitch–Understand Your "Seed Idea"

Welcome to the 5th installation on the topic of structure. As an editor for years, I consider myself an expert in spotting and fixing structural problems. Sadly, over the course of doing this many years, I have run into far too many novels that had plot problems that ran so deep there was no saving the …

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