Sue Bradford Edwards's Blog, page 235

How Do You Plot a Series: Altogether Now or Book by Book

Saturday, I finished listening to the last book in Maggie Stiefvater’s The Raven Cycle.  Somehow I decided that it was a three book series.  When I finished book #3, it was so clearly not a series ending that I took another look.  Four books.  There are four books.  Yesterday I finished The Raven King.   […]

Plotting a Novel with Depth

As I get ready to make a second attempt at plotting out my novel, I’m rereading The Plot Whisperer and The Plot Whisperer Workbook.  I’m not even past chapter 2 and I’ve already found a problem with my earlier attempts at plotting which felt confused and haphazard.  The best books are plotted at three levels — the action, […]

NoNoNaNo

What is the saying about the well laid plans of mice and men?  I actually looked it up and found this in the American Heritage Dictionary.  “No matter how carefully a project is planned, something may still go wrong with it. The saying is adapted from a line in “To a Mouse,” by Robert Burns, “The […]

Finding Fact: Research and Slant

Yesterday, Election Day, I saw a tweet that I badly wanted to forward.  It was a reminder that the majority of suffragettes were also racist and that we shouldn’t let our enthusiasm cause another person pain. Good point, but I knew that Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton didn’t only work to gain women the […]

Picking a Publisher: Don’t Forget to Examine Books

The other night I sat on one end of the sofa with a pile of picture books from the library.  I needed to find a book for my review blog, Bookshelf. I read a few pages in a picture book about how cars work.  When I got to the spread on the internal combustion engine, […]

Agents and Editors Looking for Manuscripts

Wish you knew who wanted your particular manuscript?  At least once a week, more often two or three times, I stop by twitter and read the #MSWL (Manuscript Wish List) posts.  Sunday night I learned that: Dial’s Ellen Cormier would like to find a YA with a character who slips into or back into “disordered eating […]

Best books of 2016

Okay, I wouldn’t post this before Halloween but we are now safely in November so I feel safe recommending gift books. A lot of the writers I know like to give books as gifts.  Fortunately Writer’s Digest has put together a fifty item list of the best children’s and teen books of 2016.  I’m only […]

Professionalism: Why It Might Be Best to Keep Some Things to Yourself

When you’re a writer, you get to have all kinds of really interesting (wacky) conversations with people.  I can’t even count the number of people who either tell me that they plan to write a book some day or try to sell me an idea.  But the other day was completely new. “So this book […]

Character Diversity: Don’t Create a Character Checklist

I‘m almost finished with Rick Riordan’s The Hammer of Thor, the second book in the Magnus Chase series.  This book was just what I needed.  I’m really appreciating Riordan’s relentlessly cheeky sense of humor.  That said, I had reservations early in the book. The two main characters in the book are Magnus Chase, formerly homeless hero, and […]

November’s PAD Challenge

Maybe you aren’t a novelist.  Maybe you are, like me, facing a deadline.  Maybe the thought of writing 1600+ words a day just doesn’t do much for you.  If so, you probably aren’t participating in NaNoWriMo.  And that’s cool. But if you’re still interested in a November writing challenge, then check out Writer’s Digests Poem-a-Day […]