Leitmotifs For My Characters
Feeling a bit of cabin fever? Try coming up with a theme song for each major character in your novel. Fellow incubee Anjali Mathur gave me this idea last spring when she said she put on certain songs when she…
Category: Craft Discussion
Friday Feast: Write, Revise, Repeat
We Bostonians are known for our strong feelings. After last week’s snowmageddon grump fest, it is now time to hunker down and focus. This week, we bring you links focused on writing and revision.
An Interview with Alexi Zentner, Author of The Lobster Kings
Building on the critical success of his first novel, Touch, Alexi Zentner’s second release, The Lobster Kings, appeared last year to widespread acclaim. Set on fictional Loosewood Island near the border between Maine and Canada, The Lobster Kings follows first-person…
This Draft Sucks Part II — Take A Break
This Draft Sucks – Part I ends with the following advice: if you think your draft sucks, put it away. Don’t look at it for a month and hope when you return with fresh eyes it won’t suck as badly…
Friday Feast: YA Books 4 U, Good News 4 Bookstores and Why It’s Not Called “Storyshowing”
All it takes for me to return to the glory days of the 80s is a title with “4” instead of “for.”* Boom. Time machine… It’s surprisingly difficult to find a gif of Prince eating food that doesn’t look freaky….
Too Many Metaphors?
“Our mother performed in starlight.” Thus reads the succinct and succulent first sentence of Swamplandia!, Karen Russell’s 2011 literary blockbuster (Oops! Dead metaphor.) And while it doesn’t, at first blush, contain a metaphor—their mother, Hilola Bigtree, really does perform under…