Sue Bradford Edwards's Blog, page 225
April 2, 2017
Fact Checking: Finding Out You Wrote It Wrong
Even when you are writing fiction, your facts need to be factual. Fantasy, science fiction, whatever. Your facts have got to add up. So we research and write and research some more. But sometimes it isn’t the research that reveals a mistake in your data. It’s just life. Just over a week ago, we sorted […]
March 30, 2017
Counting Books: Thinking out of the box
Just a few days ago, I reviewed Billions of Bricks: A Counting Book about Building by Kurt Cyrus. It was a marvelous lesson in out-of-the-box thinking. When I picked up the book, I expected something along the lines of one brick, two bricks . . . up through ten. But Cyrus gives the reader anything but the […]
March 29, 2017
Poem a Day Challenge or PAD
Saturday is April 1st and it marks the beginning of the 2017 PAD (Poem a Day) Challenge. The challenge is open to anyone, professional poet or novice, and is hosted by Writer’s Digest editor Robert Lee Brewer. You can find his guidelines for the challenge here. The purpose of the challenge is to write one poem each and […]
March 28, 2017
Inspiration: It Comes from All Over, Whenever
Inspiration can come from some pretty strange places. I found this cap in an antique store about 10 years ago. I spotted it because of the calcium carbide lamp on the front. I knew this was a mining lamp because my grandad used them in the mercury mines but the cap was so small. It […]
March 27, 2017
The Chant: Another Poetic Form
One of the poetic forms that we studied in Peggy Archer’s workshop was the chant. The example that Peggy gave was from April Pulley Sayre’s Trout, Trout, Trout! I have to admit, I didn’t see myself writing a chant so I didn’t take a lot of notes. Bad, bad me. Because the other when I was […]
March 26, 2017
The Nonfiction Proposal: Or Rebooting My Agent Search
At this point all of my agent queries are dead in the water. I’m going to have to wait until I finish the book that I’m working on before I can get any more queries out there. No, I’m not procrastinating. The first batch of agents didn’t want proposals. They just wanted a query letter […]
March 24, 2017
Story in Nonfiction
Today I’m going to write about one of the traps that nonfiction writers sometimes fall into. We spend a lot of time and energy doing our research and as we research we uncover so many amazing things. Did you know…? Can you believe…? I had no idea…! And we want to share them all. Because […]
March 22, 2017
Scenes: Creating a Sense of “Being There” in Nonfiction
My most recent batch of students is busy writing away. They are deep enough into their work that they are attempting to create scenes. A nonfiction scene is a lot like a fiction scene in that it is a great way to pull your reader into the story. It uses dialogue and characters, setting and […]
March 21, 2017
Poetry? Nah, I just write rhymes.
Last weekend, I attended Peggy Archer’s poetry workshop. I sat and listened as she discussed rhythm and beats, near rhyme and true rhyme, soft and hard sounds and much, much more. I was out of my element. I’m a prose writer, honey. Imagine my surprise when later that week I got an acceptance letter from […]
March 20, 2017
Middle Grade vs Young Adult
How can you tell if a teen novel is written for middle graders or young adults? For some people, the difference revolves around sex. If the characters are doing it, it must be young adult. But not all young adult novels feature sex. Some people think it has to do with the stakes or just […]
