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Theresa
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Romance University Now Features Theresa in a Monthly Column! Click the Picture for Details
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Readers' Choice for Top Ten Blog Posts
- 1. Top Ten Reasons the Editor Doesn't Love What Your Critique Group Loves
- 2. How to Put It Together Into One Neat Tweet
- 3. Marks of the Amateur - Starting a List
- 4. When Unnamed Characters Speak
- 5. Character-Driven/Plot-Driven
- 6. The Words Not Spoken, the Steps Not Taken
- 7. This Was in the Comments, But It's a Great Question, So Let's Discuss--
- 8. Dialogue Tags
- 9. Enjambment in Fiction
- 10. Thoughts on Pacing - Nothing Brilliant
Readers' Choice for Best Series by Alicia
Readers' Choice for Best Series by Theresa
Readers' Choice for Best Series by Both Editors
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Romance University Now Features Theresa in a Monthly Column! Click the Picture for Details
Our Promise to Authors
Every day we work with writers to shape their manuscripts for publication. We also evaluate submissions, read our friends’ pages, give second opinions to other editors -- in short, we confront a whole lot of manuscript pages for a whole lot of reasons. But here’s what we don’t do. We don’t -- and we never will -- pull examples directly from any of these manuscripts. The editor-author relationship depends on mutual trust and respect, and we won’t ever compromise that. We might get ideas for blog posts in the course of our interaction with writers and manuscripts, but all examples are ours, with the occasional exception of literary sources.
Theresa's Dubious Honor
Useful Sites for Writers
- AAR
- Alicia's Writer's Corner
- Brian's Common Errors Site
- Internet-Resources (Killer Collection of Links for Writers)
- Merriam Webster Online
- Poets & Writers Online
- Purdue's OWL Grammar Handouts
- Schoolhouse Rock Grammar Rock Lyrics
- The Chicago Manual of Style online
- Theresa Stevens, Editor
- U. of Chicago's Excellent Collection of Grammar References
- Vision Index: A Review Site for Books About Writing
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7 comments:
Read your post, Theresa. It was awesome! Symbolic activity within the scene? I like that. Em, this post over at RU just might be one you need to read. Think chapter three of your WIP. I'm just saying...:)
Murphy
Great advice in your post, Theresa. Math and writing? Who would've thought? Totally useful for any genre, too. I'm off to count action scenes ...
Wow, I just got a rejection based on too much exposition regarding the backstory. Worst part is, my laptop, where the only copy of the story is, is not accessible right now.
My question is, what do they mean by this? Is it too passive, or too blase, too much explanation, or what?
Leona, it means that there is too much "showing" and not enough "telling," and too much focus on what happens before the story starts. Without having seen the story, my guess is that you've got too much set-up regarding what happened in the past. Focus on dynamic present scenes that keep the story moving forward.
Theresa
Well there's a good topic -- where to start your story, how to find that starting point, and why. Hmm. I wonder if there are back articles here on that topic.
JT
~ off to look ~
Very good points!
Theresa you were exactly right. I had gone back to explain why a woman of means in the 1850's would be ostracized by the other women in town and why she would befriend the town's madam.
I believe the information is important. Maybe I will write the story from the point just before she leaves on the wagon to move to the northwest rather than summarize it.
I could make it a full length novel. After all I'm only working on three others and none of them are an historical. LOL
Alas, it will have to get in line as I've gotten my hands on some ressearch that will help me move my thriller along.
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