Tag: Kristen Lamb

Write About Inner Demons Without Boring the Reader into a Coma

Some weaknesses might be fairly obvious—grief, betrayal or addiction. The problem, however, is no one wants to read 300+ pages of someone whining about a loss or a compulsion. We would probably want to smother such a person to get her to shut up.

Botched Beginnings—Common First-Page Killers

We can Twitter ’til we flitter and Facebook ’til we face plant and that won’t matter much in the greater scheme of things if we fail at our single most important job—writing a great book. Our single greatest challenge is to hook the reader hard enough to buy (and then read) our novel. Sales ultimately …

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How to Write Mind-Blowing Plot Twists—Twisting is NOT Twerking

Okay so on Monday I talked about 3 Mistakes that Will Make Readers Want to Punch a Book in the Face. One of the mistakes involved the twist ending. Very often a writer believes she has written a twist when in fact, it is NOT a twist at all, it is a twerk. Twisting the …

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3 Mistakes that Will Make Readers Want to Punch a Book in the Face

To do my job well, I do a tremendous amount of reading. Additionally, I make it a point to make sure I read different genres so I get a sense of what writers do well (or not so well) regardless of the type of story. I’ve been inhaling Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch series as of …

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The Hard Truth About Being a Professional Writer

I happened to see this meme (above) on Facebook and I lost it laughing. This is such a great metaphor for what it is like to be a writer. In the beginning I was a rose, then I learned to become the dandelion. The dandelion might not be as pretty, but it is prolific and it …

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