Welcome to WANA Wednesday, based off my best-selling book We Are Not Alone—The Writer’s Guide to Social Media. This is the day I dedicate to help you make the most out of your social media experience. I teach, specifically, social media for writers. Writers are unique. Our social media presence is different than a business …
Category: Writing
Oct 11 2010
What Writers Can Learn from the Masters of Horror
Here we are in October, my favorite time of year. I happen to like scary movies. Not slasher flicks, but stories that disturb the psyche and really rattle us down on a visceral level. There are different levels of fear—shock, revulsion, terror, etc. As a genre, horror seems to have more subgenres and classifications …
Oct 04 2010
The Doctor is in the House–Novel Diagnostics
Welcome to our third week discussing great novel beginnings. Why are we devoting so much time to the beginning of a novel? Because the first pages are the most critical. Today I am going to let you see the first 20 pages through the eyes of an agent or editor. Novel Diagnostics 101. The doctor is …
Sep 27 2010
7 Deadly Sins of Prologues–Great Novel Beginnings Part 2
To prologue or not to prologue? That is the question. This is our second installation discussing novel beginnings…get it? Novel beginnings. Okay, I’ll stop. The problem with the prologue is it has kind of gotten a bad rap over the years, especially with agents. They generally hate them. Why? In my opinion, it is because far …
Sep 20 2010
How do you HOOK a Reader?–Understand Great Beginnings Part I
Anyone in publishing will tell you that one of the most important parts of your novel is the beginning. As an editor I hear, “Oh, but wait until you get to the good part on page 50. This is all the lead up.” Um, no. Doesn’t work that way. You might have a humdinger …






