Author: Kristin Wolden Nitz
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A Very Short Summary
All writers have a difficult time trying to summarize their books in a single sentence. Writing short and interesting summaries is also a challenge of the marketing departments. They prepare different ones for different markets. This week, I received a Google Alert that directed me to the Publisher’s Weekly’s list of children’s books coming out this fall. The…
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How Many Chapters?
Once you get a burst of inspiration, you need to find different ways of getting it down on paper from outlining to polished prose. After my last mowing/brain-storming session, I wrote down a lot of the specific ideas in my Calyn notebook: encounters, events, scraps of dialogue. After that, I moved onto a bit of outlining. …
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Mowing the Lawn II
Today as I was mowing the lawn, I thought of a way to bring all of plot lines together for the darkest moment. And I figured out when to have my character come to a truly horrible realization. There’s a reason I don’t have my kids mow and why I shovel by hand instead of…
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Preparing Summaries
One of the challenges of promoting a book is figuring out how to descrbe it for various venues. Peachtree was responsible for the following summary for the Library of Congress listing: As the family gathers at her grandmother’s bed-and-breakfast for a murder mystery weekend, seventeen-year-old Jen confronts her ambivalent feelings about her mother, who disappeared…
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Writing the Scene that Doesn’t Want to Be Written
Usually, when I’m having trouble moving ahead with a novel, I use a variation of Natalie Goldberg’s cafe writing that she shared in WRITING DOWN THE BONES. But yesterday, I decided that I wanted to write on patio of our backyard garden while our waterfall splashed and gurgled in the background. I brought coffee. (I’d trained myself…
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Thief!
Megan Whalen Turner has updated her website. In it, you can find pictures, podcast and interviews. But this link will take you directly to a short story out about a much younger Gen.
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Link to an Interview with Peter Dickinson
I’m afraid that I didn’t discover the fantastic writer Peter Dickinson until Robin McKinley married him. Since then, I’ve enjoyed his novels like THE ROPEMAKER and the story collections that he’s written with his wife. You’ll find a lovely interview with him here.
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Chapter Breaks
It’s not always easy to know where to end a chapter. Naturally, you need a strong hook that will make readers want to turn the page even if if they’ve promised themselves that they’re just going to read one more chapter before turning off the light. There’s also an issue of length. It’s perfectly fine…
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Soccer in any Language
I’m sure that it’s difficult for World Cup soccer players to hear each other over the vuvuzelas. When the words do make it through that drone, they probably have a difficult time understanding their own teammates. In many matches, they can only guess at what their opponents are saying. Goal appears to be universal even if the O-sound has a slightly different…
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Back to Chapter 13
Sometimes events can take a bit of time to settle when you’re in the middle of a major revision. As I dove into Chapter 15, I suddenly realized that Calyn would have told the Master of Horse and Hounds about the rather dramatic introduction of two new characters upon her return to Polengar. And that meant…
Kristin Wolden Nitz 