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Write Winning Query Letter to Editors, Agents
When submitting your short story or article to a magazine or your novel or non-fiction book to a literary agent or publisher, you almost certainly will need to write a query letter. The goal of such a letter, also known as a query, is to pique the receiver’s interest so they’ll bother to read your work.…
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Work Off the Fat from Overwritten Descriptions
Consider the following paragraph: Fabio’s robust, bulging arms swathed themselves in a bronze casing about Shannon’s flawless, wilting body. Her velvety, wine-colored lips arched toward his as her sparkling sapphire eyes gazed into his brilliant, glowing emerald pupils and she in turn sheathed his body with her elongated, graceful, snow white arms. They were one at…
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Five Quotes About Where Stories Come From
“Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don’t see any.” – Orson Scott Card “…everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is…
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Writing Affirmation: I’m Just Happy to Write
One of the reasons authors suffer writers block is because their mind focuses on the perceived inadequacy of their writing. Most times, these perceptions are too harsh, going far beyond any constructive, honest self-appraisal. When this occurs, the mind shuts down, leaving the writer to say, “I don’t know what to write next” and almost any…
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Sell Books by Posting at High-Traffic Blogs
One great way to sell books online – especially if you write nonfiction – is by commenting on posts at high-traffic blogs related to your book’s topic. That’s because you’re targeting an audience that is highly interested in the topics you’ve written about. Begin by identifying the high-traffic blogs. Pick one or two words that best…
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Make Tables Readable in Your Self-Published Book
When self-publishing a nonfiction book, you probably will want to include tables of some sort. If writing a book about rock climbing, for example, you might include a list of the National Climbing Classification System. The problem with tables created in Microsoft Word is that they don’t resize well. In Word parlance, a table is a…
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Writing Prompt: Go Some Place New
Suffering from writer’s block or need to add some spunk to your writing? The problem may be that you need to change up your routine. To that end, try this tip: Spend an hour in a place that you would not normally go to but have always wanted to visit. Write down what you see, hear…
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Consider Using Man vs. Nature Conflict in Story
When developing your story, you’ll want your characters to face a number of challenges or conflicts. One of the most basic of them is man vs. nature. In this conflict, the characters find their goals jeopardized by the natural forces of the universe: the cold of an ice age, dangerous plants and animals in an alien…
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Five Great Quotations about Readers
“People do tell a writer things that they don’t tell others. I don’t know why, unless it is that having read one or two of his books they feel on peculiarly intimate terms with him; or it may be that they dramatize themselves and, seeing themselves as it were as characters in a novel, are ready…
