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.
Tag: Kristen Lamb
May 31 2016
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 …
May 25 2016
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 …
May 23 2016
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 …
May 18 2016
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 …











