Trained by reading hundreds of submissions, editors and agents often make their read/not-read decision on the first page. In a customarily formatted book manuscript with chapters starting about 1/3 of the way down the page (double-spaced, 1-inch margins, 12-point type), there are 16 or 17 lines on the first page. Here’s the question: Would you pay good money to read the rest of the chapter? With 50 chapters in a book that costs $15, each chapter would be “worth” 30 cents. So, before you read the excerpt, take 30 cents from your pocket or purse. When you’re done, decide what to do with those t ..read more

In her March 14th post, Polarize Your Characters, Energize Your Novel, Kathryn Craft made the following excellent observation: “[E]xtreme differences in perspective can provide what subtler conflicts cannot. The chasm that opens between your characters can expose deeply held morals and values that will make your story seem to matter more. Exploring a chasm’s many sides can give all persuasions of readers someone to relate to in your novel, even as you show the ways that each deeply held belief is relatable. A chasm allows your protagonist to fall into a deeper, darker place, allowing you to ..read more

Narcissus, staring at his reflection, from a 14th century manuscript. Kepler’s Fourth Law of Planetary Motion:  The world doesn’t revolve around you, you know.   To write well, you need to get into other people’s heads – to understand that your way of seeing the world isn’t the only way there is.  This empathy can become such a habit that you can forget that some people just can’t do it.  Either these narcissists imagine that everyone who thinks differently from them is plain wrong, or they don’t even realize there are differences. Narcissists, though, can make for good ..read more

There is a famous paradox, attributed to a fourteenth century French philosopher named Jean Buridan, about a hypothetical donkey, equally hungry and thirsty, who is placed at the exact midpoint between a stack of hay and a pail of water. Everything the donkey needs and wants is within reach—yet he dies of both hunger and thirst, since it can’t decide which way to move. (The idea actually goes back to 350 B.C., when Aristotle wrote: “A man, being just as hungry as thirsty, and placed in-between food and drink, must necessarily remain where he is and starve to death.”) In another well-know ..read more

photo adapted / Horia Varlan I am drawn to the things that people won’t talk about. That may be obvious, if you know that my first two novels were about body image and suicide. When was the last time you asked a new mom about her poochy, post-baby abdomen, or what it was like for your neighbor to find her son dead by his own hand? Body-altering, life-changing events happen to us every day that most people just won’t talk about, even though staying mum feeds a churning magma of shame. Secrets and lies are everywhere in contemporary fiction, and will often drive the entire novel, as David Corb ..read more

Please welcome back multi-published author Henriette Lazaridis as our guest today! Henriette is the author of The Clover House (a Boston Globe bestseller), Terra Nova (which the New York Times called “ingenious”), and Last Days in Plaka, which was published just yesterday, on April 9th. Last Days in Plaka is Henriette’s most personal novel to date. A first generation Greek American and only child of expat parents, Henriette grew up speaking Greek as her first language and listening to her father relay Homer’s Odyssey. It’s no wonder that she has set her latest novel in Greece or that the stor ..read more

A few months ago, as the buzz around my debut novel, One Summer In Savannah, began dying down, a question posed to me by a friend really rocked me to my core. “Was your book successful?” I opened my mouth to speak but no words materialized. I snapped it shut and opened it again. This time, the words came out all at once. “Yeah…I think…sure. I don’t know.” I had not given much thought to the question. For me, or so I thought, my debut was successful the moment I typed the last word, and, later, signed a two-book deal with Sourcebooks. Writing books is hard. It has been said 97% of people who s ..read more

This is a brief post because there is so much to think about, and I want to hear what you’re leaning into. Here’s what’s been happening in my marketing mind for the last few weeks. What’s your superpower? Last fall, when I was working with the brilliant and lovely writer Anne Gudger, author of the memoir The Fifth Chamber, she told me that grief is her superpower. This statement struck me. How? I’ve read that this is a common question in job interviews to ease the tension that interviews bring and to assess a candidate’s strengths. Makes sense. Anne wrote about the death of her first husband ..read more

For the first time in long time, AI didn’t dominate the publishing news. Maybe AI is so common place now that it’s not newsworthy anymore? We’ll see. But copyright infringement using AI is still an unresolved issue, it seems. There are lots of movers and shakers in the publishing world moving and shaking. Three publishing veterans have created a new startup publishing house that was announced in March, and just FYI, an agent is required to submit your manuscript. Romantasy is exploding, so much so that it had its very first conference devoted solely to the genre. Oprah may have been the first ..read more

Back in March 2020, as we collectively sprayed our groceries with Clorox, I wrote an essay for my friends here at Writer Unboxed called “Confessions of a Former Anti-Outliner” in which I presented my case for why outlining novels before writing them is just about the greatest thing ever. In the four years and two outlined novels since, I’ve become even more self-righteous on the subject. As far as I’m concerned you lawless hooligans who write by the seat of your pants should be sent to some sort of minimum-security book prison. Recently, though, something unexpected happened that caused me to ..read more