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Better Writers – Better Manuscripts
A Spindle Splintered: Retelling a Fairy Tale
By Laura McGill Sleeping Beauty has hundreds of versions, with new ones printed every year. Most readers know the glossy animation, perhaps a few scraps of older, darker folklore, and maybe a sprinkling of modern retellings. You can’t surprise an American audience. They know what to expect: first the curse, then the spindle, finally the
Authorial Voice in Heroes by Stephen Fry
By Ashley Goodnow Stephen Fry’s Heroes retells the stories of demigods and mortals in Greek mythology with an educated and sophisticated, yet still modern, manner. Unlike most stories that are written through the point of view of a specific character, Heroes is told from the narrator’s perspective flavored today’s knowledge giving insight into the culture
A Deadly Education: Getting Away with Info Dumps
By Charity West Naomi Novik’s brilliant twist on the magic school trope, A Deadly Education, explores the idea of what would happen if the magic school was trying to kill you. The story starts with our main character, El (short for Galadriel, much to her chagrin), having her life saved for the second time, and
Writing a Main Character that Readers Love – The House in the Cerulean Sea
By Kaitlyn Meyers Creating characters is fun, right? Yes? No? …Maybe? Creating and crafting a character is, unfortunately, vital to stories because they are the ones actually telling the story. So what makes a reader love a character, especially a main one? The same things that make a person care about another person. Think about
Tension on Every Page with Project Hail Mary
By Terra Luft Project Hail Mary is the latest science fiction novel from author Andy Weir. If you loved Weir’s first book, The Martian, I think this latest novel is even better. It has the perfect balance of exciting plot, interesting characters, and fascinating science set in space. Ryland Grace wakes up alone on a
About Kids but Not for Kids – Across the Green Grass Fields
By Laura McGill Imagine a pre-teen Horse Girl. (No, not literally. I mean the sort of girl who doodles ponies in the margins of her homework. It’s a thing.) After fighting with her friends, she discovers a fantasy world full of Horse People. (Yes, literally. They’re centaurs.) There’s a quest, of course, lessons on friendship,
Six of Crows and Integrating Internal Thoughts with Dialogue
By Ashley Goodnow Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo bands together a motley group of thieves and criminals for a jailbreak heist set in a fantasy world that’s bleeding with magic and racial strife. As the story unfolds through different point of views, it creates a strong sense of each character’s individuality and allows readers
Upmarket Writing with Addie LaRue
By Callie Stoker In the ever-shifting trends of publishing, buzzwords pop up in the first lines of queries with the hope of grabbing attention and making deals. Words like “whimsy” and “quirky” have been around for ages, trends like “own voices” (which is hopefully more a move in the right direction, not a passing fad),
The Precious One: Hooking the Reader on Every Page
By Charity West The Precious One by Marisa de Los Santos is the story of two daughters: the precious one and the one cast aside. The story starts as the rejected daughter, the elder daughter, gets a phone call from the father—asking her to come home. This is the most recent book to keep me
The Characterizations of a Martian
By Kaitlyn Meyers The Martian by Andy Weir is a survival sci-fi novel that will keep you reading out of utter desperation. We follow astronaut Mark Watney, who is stranded on Mars after an accident that makes mankind believe he is dead. He is alone, trying to survive for an exorbitant number of days (called
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