Sue Bradford Edwards's Blog, page 254
February 22, 2016
Ready to Read?
Tomorrow (2/24/2016) is world read aloud day. Sponsored by litworld.org, the goal of tis day is to help develop a community of readers and celebrate the fact that literacy belongs to everyone. This is one of those things that should be really important to you as a children’s writer, especially if you write picture books. […]
February 21, 2016
Research: How much is enough?
Recently I read a blog post about how much research you need to do before you start writing a piece of historic fiction. The author of the post had been researching the year in which her story was set (1939) for a full year. She wondered when she would have enough research to start writing. […]
February 18, 2016
Remember: Writing for Children is FUN!
When you write for a living, sometimes you have to remind yourself that writing for children is fun. No really. It is. Or at least it had better be. If you don’t have fun, your readers won’t have fun either. So how do you remind yourself to have fun? Some people manage to do it […]
February 17, 2016
Opening Scenes: How to Start Your Book
How you choose to open your book sets up an expectation in your reader. Open with a chase scene and the reader expects high adventure, speed and excitement. Open with something that goes bump in the night and your reader expects tension and continued spooks and scares. That’s well and good for fiction but how […]
February 16, 2016
Stretching it Out: Scenes that Matter Need to Last
If the scene that you are writing carries great weight in your book, it needs to last. Whether it is a battle scene, a character’s death or a moment of brutal realization, it needs to take up space. Unfortunately, these scenes are hard to write, because this is where we literally torture our darlings. These […]
February 15, 2016
Have You Written Your Two Throw Away Books?
The first book manuscript that you finish may very well not be the first one that you sell. Why? As an unknown author, you need a book that is going to pack a powerful push to help you gain readers. Once you’ve done that, a book with a little less market appeal may be possible. […]
February 14, 2016
President’s Day
Happy President’s Day! Have you ever written anything about one of our Presidents? I wrote about Martha Washington once and I have to admit that I’d love to write a series on America’s First Ladies. I think it would make a great group of early readers. I’m just begining to research a book set when […]
February 11, 2016
Color our collections
Consider this a Friday Fun post. The first week of February was “Color Our Collections,” a time when many libraries and museums made PDFs of various parts of their collections available for download. Although the event itself is technically over, the PDFs are still available. The variety is amazing. I love the selection from the […]
February 10, 2016
New imprint at Agate
I always love to find news about a new publisher or imprint. This time around, an established publisher, Agate, is adding a juvenile list to their list by African-American authors. The new line, Denene Millner Books, will be a part of the Bolden imprint. This list debuts in February 2017 with Early Sunday Morning by Millner, illustrated by […]
February 9, 2016
Three or Four Acts?
Recently, I saw an infrographic that showed a story as not 3 Acts but 4. Since I’m one of these people that always rushes the ending, this is a Godsend for me. Act Four is the Resolution. That means I need to take an entire act to wrap things up. That’s more of less 16 […]
