From Our Blog
Best Left Unsaid: Mastering Omission, Misdirection, and Precision in Dialogue
We all want to write fast-paced, energy-packed dialogue, but like everything else related to being a novelist, what looks the most effortless from the outside is actually the most challenging.
The magic of sizzling dialogue lies in what’s not said—an invisible tension beneath the words. Omission, misdirection, and precision make otherwise mundane conversations come alive.
The goal is dialogue t…
Prologue at Your Own Risk: When to Use Them and How to Make Them Work
A prologue is an introduction to a literary work that comes before the main narrative of the story. Its purpose is to provide information to the reader that is not readily apparent in the first chapter. Simple, right?
Anyone who has been writing novels for a while can tell you that the debate on prologues is fierce. Many of us writers refuse to include them, while the rest of us adore t…
You can never read the same story twice. Some of us complain about returning to earlier favorites only to find they’ve been rendered unreadable by visits from an imaginary being called “the Suck Fairy.” The Suck Fairy brings to our attention the unfortunate assumptions our favorite authors made as they created their fictional worlds: the racism implicit in Tarzan’s superiority over Black Africa…
The Ins, the Outs, and the Uh-Ohs of a Series: Writing Connected Books
Early in my writing career, I took a lot of world-building workshops. At the time, I was writing contemporary romances set in quirky small towns, so I would carefully build and populate my world. Then, I would turn in the manuscript and start all over again. It took years before I thought, “Wait … what if I stayed in one fictional place and explored more of its stories before moving on?”
Part o…
Magical Literature: The Current Popularity of Witches in Novels
It’s October, where the onset of fall, Halloween, and the alleged thinning of the veil between the living and dead initiates interests in ghosts, sorcery, and witches. But in the last few years, there’s been a proliferation of witches in literature, including romance, cozy mystery, science fiction, and urban fantasy, among others—and not just at Halloween. It’s a current trend that’s created a …
Pondering the Pursuit of an MFA? Consider the Pros, the Cons, and the Worth of Your Why
When Black & Published podcast host and author Nikesha Elise Williams queried 12 agents in November of 2022 with her latest manuscript, The Seven Daughters of Dupree, she told herself that if she didn’t receive representation, she would pursue earning an MFA (Master of Fine Arts) degree.
She had plenty of options to choose from; there are 256 low- and full-residency MFA programs across the …