Sue Bradford Edwards's Blog, page 256
January 25, 2016
What Are You Writing?
Whenever a new writer comes to critique group, I ask, “What do you write?” Can I say, without giving offense, that it is off-putting if they can’t tell me? Too often the answer is “children’s stories” or “books for children.” That’s too broad and it makes me think that you don’t know the answer in […]
January 24, 2016
Picture Book Writing: How Much Detail
Recently I read a blog post by agent Heather Alexander on whether or not to include illustration notes in your picture book manuscript. In short, her answer is NO. Yes, there are times that it is okay but most often the answer is NO. Why is this? Because for the most part illustration notes are […]
January 21, 2016
Creating Distance Between Your Reader and Your Character
Most often, we try to find ways to bring our readers closer to our characters. We give the characters traits with which our readers can identify. This might involve making the character slightly older than the reader, putting her in a similar circumstance or have her experience a similar emotion. But sometimes we want to […]
January 20, 2016
Edgar Nominees Announced
On Tuesday, the Edgar nominees were announced. Each year, the Edgars are awarded by the Mystery Writers of America for the best mysteries. I’d love to say that I’ve read all of these but the Edgars always take me by surprise. Every stinking year. The nominees for the two categories of interest to writers for […]
January 19, 2016
Why You Need an Online Presence
I haven’t been doing as many author interviews since I no longer write for Children’s Writer, but a new project has my creating questions and looking for information on a handful of authors. I know I’ve said it before but I have to say it again – I am truly amazed by the number of authors […]
January 18, 2016
My New Book: Trench Warfare
Hip, hip, hooray! Both of my 2016 books are out as of January 1. I’ve already posted about 12 Incredible Facts about the Cuban Missile Crisis (12-story), so today I’m going to focus on Trench Warfare (Abdo). It seems like each and every time I write one of these books, I learn a thing or twenty. […]
Martin Luther King Day
First things first, my apologies for not getting this up last night. I was just heading to bed when I realized I didn’t have everything ready to go. My apologies. This time last year, I had just finished working on Black Lives Matter. I had turned in the full manuscript and done the rewrites under […]
January 14, 2016
Inspiration from Life
In order to help your readers connect with your writing, it helps to provide an emotion that resonates with them. Explorers feel excitement and anticipation. When things go wrong, they may feel dread or frustration. To write these things realistically, you just need to connect with emotional inspiration in your own life. Recently, my son […]
January 13, 2016
Dialogue: Writing Dialect or in Another Language
One of the toughest things to do in writing fiction, IMO (no H involved), is to write dialogue. Too often we try to make it sound real and end up making it sound strange. This is especially true when we try to write dialect or imitate a foreign language. I once read a book that […]
January 12, 2016
Agents: And the Search Goes On…
As we head into 2016, I’m still on the lookout for an agent. I have 3 submissions out at this point. Kristen Hall from Catbird Literary has had it for 2 months which really isn’t all that long even for a 200 word picture book. Yes, I am being serious. Until an agent opens an e-mail submission, […]
