There are a number of reasons your young adult manuscript might be getting rejected by literary agents and editors. Lately, though I’ve noticed a series of common writing problems popping up in a lot of young adult manuscripts that might get them rejected. Does yours suffer from any of the following? Read on to see. 5 … [Read more…]
Flashbacks are defined as a scene or piece of a scene from a past time that is interjected into an ongoing story. Flashbacks in fiction are usually presented as a memory of the point of view character, and many writers seem quite fond of adding them to their books. The problem with flashbacks is that … [Read more…]
How to end a chapter? What’s the big deal? When everything is all tied up, you move on, right? No. In fact, everything shouldn’t be “all tied up” until the very end. In the body of your story, there should never be a place where everything is 100% good. Sure, the characters can think things … [Read more…]
When I first started writing, I’d never heard of motivation reaction units (MRU). What I did know, though, was sometimes things just didn’t seem to flow. Sections of prose would feel awkward and just not right. So I would re-read and re-word until they did. Even after I did know what motivation reaction units were, … [Read more…]
The words you use, and the order and way you use them, makes a huge difference when you are trying to improve pacing in writing. This applies to any type of fiction—when you write a book or short story, the details definitely matter! When your final product is in the hands of a reader, you … [Read more…]