Sue Bradford Edwards's Blog, page 260
October 22, 2015
Antagonist vs Villain: Which are you writing?
Which type of character are you creating for your story? Before you can answer, you need to know the differences. When I hear the word villain, I think of an old-fashioned, cartoon baddy. Mustache-twirling. Skulking in the shadows. It can be hard to pull off a villain because they often come across as two-dimensional. But […]
October 21, 2015
Agents: A Bit More Research
About two weeks ago, I took one of my three agent query letters to critique group to get some feedback. As always my writing buddies had some great ideas. Thank you! Then I realized that with this one letter, I had done something a bit different. In all three letters, I had told the agent […]
October 20, 2015
Family Story Time: Learning about Your Audience
Last week, our church sponsored a Family Story Time for the families at our preschool. If you’re a picture book writer, you need to find something like this so that you can spy. First I watched the kids while Julie read a book about a wild romp through the house — Is Everyone Ready for Fun? by […]
October 19, 2015
What do you do after you meet a deadline?
I remember when I was a new writer, unpublished, and I thought I would have these amazing rituals to celebrate sales and meeting deadlines. Hey! Back off! I majored in anthropology. Rituals. I’d celebrate like this . . . I’d go buy that . . . I’d have something that represented each of my sales […]
October 18, 2015
Meeting a Deadline
I have a book due tomorrow. Yep. 15,000 words. So what did I do this weekend? I went on retreat. I had had it planned before I had the deadline but that’s not the only reason I went. It was a writing retreat. Yep, a retreat with fellow writers. Writers get deadlines. We were all there […]
October 15, 2015
Historic Mysteries: Macabre Writing Prompts
On October 7, the anniversary of Edgar Allan Poe’s death, I saw an Open Culture piece on 19 different theories about how Poe died. Nineteen! Of course, I got to wondering, how many of these would make good stories. One of the most interesting, at least in terms of story is that he died of […]
October 14, 2015
Agents: Adding to my list
At critique group last week, I showed my query letter to several other writers. Now I have some idea what to shorten and what to expand before I send my letter off. But just in case my top three agents aren’t interested in representing my work, I’m still collecting the names of agents I might […]
October 13, 2015
Don’t Lose Your Reader
Recently, I was reading book #1 in a new-to-me YA series. I’ll admit that I have some misgivings about the series simply based on the topic but after speaking to the publicist I wanted to give the book a chance. The book is in the first person and I’m getting to know the character pretty […]
October 12, 2015
Publishers open to unagented manuscripts
Even as I’m working to find an agent, I know that that may take some time. So I’m keeping an eye on trade publishers that take submissions directly from authors. Here are a few of my favorites. Arthur A. Levine Books is a Scholastic imprint that accepts submissions. Sadly their work and my work don’t jive […]
October 11, 2015
Developing a Writing Habit
Are you one of those writers who has to be in just the right mood to write? That has to commune with your Muse? I’m not. I can’t afford to be. Absolutely nothing helps you develop a regular writing habit better than deadlines. At the moment, I have 5: One Muffin blog post. The final draft […]
