As promised, here’s some of what Amalia Ellison had to say at SCBWI LA ’08. Amalia is young and she’s an assistant editor. She wanted to tell us why that was a good thing and how she could benefit us. She is autonomous (at Abram’s Amulet Books, where she works now) and she acquires just [...]

[Read more →]

As promised, here are my notes from SCBWI LA 2008 on Michael Stearns and Amalia Ellison. Michael Stearns, first. He’s now with Firebrand Literary. He has edited on and off for twenty years with Harcourt and HarperCollins. Among the books he’s published: East by Edith Pattou Fly by Night by Frances Hardinge A Northern Light [...]

[Read more →]

I just got back from the 2008 LA conference. Yikes! Talk about writer’s cramp. I filled a notebook with notes. I need to start taking a laptop with me. I have several things to tell you. Where to start? Hmmm. I have it: Adam Rex is adorable. Heh heh OK sorry. I will tell you [...]

[Read more →]

So when is it OK to use passive voice? Passive voice is useful and necessary when you don’t know who is acting, when what was done is more important than who did it, and when you want to speed up the narrative. When you don’t know who is acting: A fern was crushed. The tracker [...]

[Read more →]

Passive voice is to be avoided in writing. Why? Because it’s boring. Hmmm. So maybe I should have said, “Writers should avoid using the passive voice.” Is that more interesting than the first line I went with? There are “passive voice” cops who will complain about every instance of passive voice in a manuscript. And [...]

[Read more →]

We know we want conflict on every page because conflict is what keeps the readers turning the pages. They want tension. It’s true that we love blood and guts. We loved them in the days of the Coliseum and we still do love them. We want car chases. We want bombs. We want fistfights. When [...]

[Read more →]

We’ve established the fact that good stories need conflict. Plot is all about conflict and resolution. I think we’ve all heard some variation of the saying, “When the book gets boring, throw a body out a window.” Maybe because of the graphic violence on TV and in the movies we think, “If we need conflict, [...]

[Read more →]

It didn’t use to be much of a problem for novelists. Everyone wrote in past tense. First person past tense, or third person past tense. Past Tense—First Person: Yesterday I hit the ball, kicked the cat, and ate the pancakes. Past Tense—Third Person: Yesterday Timmy hit the ball, kicked the cat, and ate the pancakes. [...]

[Read more →]

Because of the limitations inherent in the first person point of view, writers will often opt for the third person. But the third person pov brings different limitations to the table. It is more distant that first person, for one thing. Look at a passage written in the two points of view. The First Person [...]

[Read more →]

How do you put in necessary backstory without losing your reader who wants to move forward? Well, instead of using an info dump, I think you should use an info dribble. Just like it sounds. Little bits of info here, and little bits of info there. Look again at the bit of reportage we made [...]

[Read more →]