Jamie Raintree The holidays are a time for slowing down and reflecting on the past year. They're also a time for thinking about the year to come. Whether or not you set resolutions, no doubt you've got ideas about what you'd like to accomplish in 2017 and the bad habits you want to leave behind […]

James Preston “I’m sorry, Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.” We’ll come back to that in a minute. Story is important. What we do is important. My guess is you believe that or you wouldn't be reading this blog. I had that knowledge driven home one year on vacation. Welcome to another installment of […]

Angela Ackerman Stories should be a true experience for readers. Like a gourmet meal, we want there to be more to them than just what is seen on the surface. This depth can be added a number of ways—through subplots, character arc, subtext, theme, and symbolism. Of them all, symbolism is one of the simplest […]

Piper Bayard It’s December—the month after National Novel Writing Month. We blink our eyes and search around like the lights just came up in the bar. Or maybe our expressions are more like that look a cat gets when a kid puts a paper bag over it for a few minutes and then pops it […]

Susan Spann While authors often obsess about getting any agent to represent them, in reality, writers should be concerned about finding the right agent—the one whose personality, business habits, and expectations are a match to the author’s own. The author-agent relationship is a partnership. Like any business relationship, its success is heavily dependent on the […]