Sue Bradford Edwards's Blog, page 172
March 18, 2019
Questions to Ask an Agent
You might think I’m a stunning conversationalist. After all, I’ve done dozens and dozens of interviews. I ask questions. I listen to answers. I ask more questions and respond. But I get to plan these interview-based conversations ahead of time. Yeah. It makes a huge difference. That’s why I’m noodling over what I want to ask […]
March 17, 2019
Be Back Tomorrow
My apologies for the lack of a post today! I have a chapter and outline to turn in today, this weekend we celebrated my son’s birthday, and this week is spring break. Many good things but . . . many things. I will be back tomorrow. In the meanwhile, enjoy a good book. Read something […]
March 14, 2019
Why I Keep Multiple Projects Going
“I don’t know how you can work on so many things at once. I can only focus on one project at a time.” Periodically, new writers say something like this to me. And I admit, I generally have a ridiculous number of things on my weekly to-do list. Each week, my list takes up two […]
March 13, 2019
Titles: Choosing the Right One for Your Book
“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” I get Shakespeare’s point but I’m not sure I agree. Character names and book titles are, unfortunately, important. Why unfortunately? Because I’m not all that great at creating titles for my manuscripts. It is a struggle. Monday I finished roughing out a humorous picture book […]
March 12, 2019
F&W Media Filing Chapter 11
Sadness. If you haven’t seen the news yet, F&W Media filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on March 10. This is the company that annually publishes The Writer’s Market, The Children’s Writer’s Market, The Guide to Literary Agents, and The Novel and Short Story Writer’s Market. They also publish a wide range of magazines including Writer’s Digest, Popular […]
March 11, 2019
Characterization and Dialogue: Keeping Things Real
One of the most fascinating parts of writing fiction is creating characters that sound real in every way. This means that their dialogue has to sound real and they have to be three-dimensional. Dialogue can seem false when it is straight forward and oh so linear. Character A asks a question. Character B answers it. […]
March 10, 2019
Adults in childrens books
Recently I read an interesting Twitter thread from David Bowles. You can read the thread here. In this thread, Bowles discusses how, when writing middle grade fiction, he needs to give full agency to the child characters and somehow prevent the parents from parenting. He can make the parents bumbling fools or otherwise do away […]
March 7, 2019
Graphic Novels: What’s Coming Out This Spring
If you are into graphic novels, sign up for this School Library Journal event to see what is coming out this spring. Title: Spring Graphic Novels Date: Thursday, March 14, 2019 Time: 02:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time This one hour event is designed to help librarians expand their graphic novel collections. That said, it is also a great idea to […]
March 6, 2019
Setting: A Matter of Modern Mystery
A realistic setting is vital to your story. VITAL. It is one of the things that makes your story real and pulls readers in. We’ve all heard this advice time and time again. Yet there is something that I’m realizing this year. Not every author reveals where their book is set. If I hadn’t decided […]
March 5, 2019
Cover Reveal!
Look what I found on Amazon yesterday while researching “Additional Reading” to go in the back matter for another book. STEM CELLS! This was one of those projects that turns out to be much more difficult than anticipated. For one thing, I knew very little about stem cells when I started. I wanted to know […]
