Sue Bradford Edwards's Blog, page 156

Picture Books: Cumulative Tales

Have you ever tried to write a cumulative tale?  In a cumulative picture book, a piece of action and/or dialogue repeats and builds.  Not sure what I mean?  Think of The Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly.  She swallows a fly so, as they rhyme goes, perhaps she’ll die. Then she swallows a spider to […]

Tormenting Your Character

Earlier in the week, I saw a creative writing prompt from Writer’s Digest.  The suggestion was to create a story based on putting your character in the most embarrassing situation imaginable. Obviously, what this would be would vary from character to character.  Someone who is painfully neat might make a horrible mess.  A quiet person […]

RIP Andrew Clements

Sadness.  Tuesday I learned that children’s author Andrew Clements died on November 28.  The author of more than 80 books for young readers, he is probably best known for Frindle.   Please tell me you know this book.  Frindle is the story of Nick Allen whose teacher is wild for the dictionary.  Nick decides to invent a new word […]

Research: Prepping to Write

If you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time, you know I like to stretch my wings.  Sometimes this means writing something new or taking a class.  This time around it is all about teaching a new class. Research: Prepping to Write Nonfiction for Children and Young Adults is being offered through WOW! […]

Character Archetypes

Last week, I wrote a post on character archetypes.  You can view it here. Gabriela Pereira added another post summarizing two more archetypes – the Survivor and the Protector. Unlike other archetypes that Pereira discusses, these two character types are not looking to change themselves or the world around them. They are instead in a […]

Reading Challenges

Today I signed up for the Winter Reading Challenge at the St. Louis Country Library.  Generally in a reading challenge you have to read X number of pages, X number of books, or for X minutes.  This one is a little different. For an opportunity to win a prize, at least as an adult, I […]

Thankful Thanksgiving

For those of you who celebrate, I’d like to wish you a Happy Thanksgiving. Take this time to recharge your creative battery. I have a lot to be thankful for in my writing life.  I just finished a rewrite on book #27.  And about two weeks ago a publisher contacted me about writing for them.  […]

Imposter Syndrome

Thanksgiving is tomorrow which means that you may very well find yourself sitting across the table from someone who questions your writing credentials.  “So how is that little story that your working on?” Never mind that you are in the midst of NaNoWriMo and have written thousands of words this month alone.  You are still […]

Character Archetypes

Long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away when I first heard people talk about character archetypes, they spoke of only one group of archtypes. This were the mythological archetypes as identified by Joseph Campbell and written about in The Writer’s Journey by Christopher Vogler.  As discussed by Vogler, the archetypes can help you find a […]

Why Writers Need to Be Bored

I need my down time, quiet time, time away from screens.  I’ve known this for years but now I begin to understand why. “When you’re bored, you tend to daydream, and your mind wanders, and this is a very, very important part of the creative process,” says psychologist Sandi Mann.  When I read this in […]