Where do you want your writing career to be one year from now? How many books do you want to have written? How many books do you want to have studied? How much revenue do you want to have generated? What is your plan for meeting these targets? I’ll admit, these questions have always freaked me out a bit. They hold such promise but they’re also uncomfortable because they require
To download a PDF of this article, subscribe to Valerie’s Inner Circle and check the Resources section of the Members Only area also published on the Story Grid website as Writing a Page Turner: Part 3 Today I wrap up my three-part series on narrative drive with a look at dramatic irony. Narrative drive is all about how much information the reader has in relation to the protagonist. It’s a
To download a PDF of this article, subscribe to Valerie’s Inner Circle and check the Resources section of the Members Only area also published on the Story Grid website as Writing a Page Turner: Part 2 I’ve been studying narrative drive quite a bit in the past few months and have already gone into great detail about what it is in the post on mystery as well as the Story
Given the year we’ve just had, there’s a lot of pressure on 2021 to be amazing. We’ve got high expectations for it, and for everything else. We want better. We need better. And so, I thought long and hard about which book I’d recommend this month. Which book can deliver in this heightened state of anticipation? Which book epitomizes the excellence we’re craving? Is it the memoir of someone who’s
To download a PDF of this article, subscribe to Valerie’s Inner Circle and check the Resources section of the Members Only area also published on the Story Grid website as Writing a Page Turner: Part 1 As a novelist, I’m fascinated by what keeps readers turning pages. How do we hook a reader at page one, and keep her spellbound until the end? I’ve been looking for an answer to
When it comes to Christmas stories, there are three broad categories; romances, ghost stories and tales of yesteryear. As I began my search for a book to recommend this month, I wanted something different and I think I found it. Seven Days of Us by Francesca Hornak still offers the light-hearted goodness of a Christmas story, but the holidays are used as a device for getting this dysfunctional family together.
Page [tcb_pagination_current_page] of [tcb_pagination_total_pages]
stories for women, by women, and about women