All articles on our blog, whether part of our Writing Advice Column or something else:)
Advance Your Career by Creating Story Folders by Karen S. Wiesner Based on Bring Your Fiction to Life: Crafting Three-Dimensional Stories with Depth and Complexity and CPR for Dead or Lifeless Fiction {A Writer’s Guide…
Arrested Development by Karen S. Wiesner Based on Bring Your Fiction to Life: Crafting Three-Dimensional Stories with Depth and Complexity and CPR for Dead or Lifeless Fiction {A Writer’s Guide to Deep and Multifaceted Development…
In the romance genre, we often look for books with a particular trope (i.e. reoccurring theme). The infamous “bad boy” most likely comes to mind. Yes, readers tend to have a strange fascination with these…
Choosing a Setting: Real or Fiction By Deborah Nolan It’s been said that location is another character in a story. I think that’s true if the setting is described well enough and with…
CONFESSIONS OF A ROMANCE WRITER and READER By Deborah Nolan I am and have always been an avid reader. As long as I have a book or preferably a stack of books and…
So…people ask, how did you end up making your living as an Author of Erotica? And d’you know…it was accidental. Not becoming a writer, you understand. That was anything but accidental. I knew by the…
Inspirational Romance By Regina Andrews Step into the world of Inspirational Romance novels and take a voyage through the entire spectrum of human emotions. Get ready to be uplifted! Get ready to be devastated!…
Upon browsing agents’ wish lists the other day, I was puzzled when I saw the request for “literary thrillers”. An interesting term, I thought. Truly contradictory. Right? From everything I know about literary fiction and…
Are you writing police mysteries thrillers? Want to get it right? I do, too, though I may have an advantage, having been a police officer for 30 years. Although the home setting for my books…
Psychoanalyst Ernest Jones, in his 1951 classic nonfiction book On the Nightmare, labels the vampire the most “overdetermined” of monsters in terms of its psychological roots–and, we might add, in terms of its richly…
Mystery: The whole point of the story is the big reveal of the bad guy at the end. There must be enough information in the story pointing to the real villain that when they…
The “cozy” mystery features an amateur sleuth who is usually a woman. The sleuth is likeable, smart and earnest, and they go about life with a good sense of humor. She’s rarely a detective or…
WHERE DO WE FIND OUR HEROES? By Deborah Nolan With Valentine’s Day on the horizon I thought it would be a good time to talk about what makes a romantic hero. The heroes in…
AVOID A SAGGING MIDDLE By DEE LLOYD No middle should sag. The dragging, sagging pace of the middle of a romance is every bit as unattractive as the lax muscles of a person’s…
AVOID REJECTION… AN EDITOR’S CHECK LIST By DEE LLOYD During my six years as Acquisitions Editor for the now-defunct LTDBooks I must have read several thousand submissions. Many of the manuscripts I reluctantly had to…
JUDGE A BOOK BY ITS BACK COVER BLURB by Karen Wiesner Fact 1: Readers judge books by their back cover blurbs just as they might a cover. Fact 2: Authors and publishers want…
Crafting Blurbs Overview by Karen Wiesner Back Cover Blurbs A back cover blurb can be anywhere from one to four paragraphs. If the whole package is short and punchy, as we’ve said, it’s practically…
Writers Exchange E-Publishing is trying to really build up our blog to be a place where readers will want to go for the articles and memes on our favourite subject: books! To help with…
Deep, Multi-Faceted Development and Progression of Romantic Relationships By Karen S. Wiesner Based on CPR for Dead or Lifeless Fiction {A Writer’s Guide to Deep and Multifaceted Development and Progression of Characters, Plot, and…
The Stuff Series Are Made Of By Karen S. Wiesner “The disease of writing is dangerous and contagious,” Abelard famously said to Heloise. So, too, can a book series become a relentless obsession: It’s…
