Deciding on the right tense for your novel has a direct impact on world-building, character development, and creating an immersive story. A well-written story pulls the reader in, avoiding clunky writing or language that keeps readers at just the right level of closeness and intimacy with the characters. Read more

Intellectual property can be broken up into three main categories: copyright, patents, and trademarks. For the purposes of this blog post, when I refer to intellectual property, I am referring to copyright, though trademarks are often a topic of concern for writers as well. Read more

I've written about the basics of formatting dialogue here. This blog is a deeper dive into industry standards and expectations for formatting dialogue tags and action beats in a variety of scenarios in fiction. Read more

We’ve all dealt with the grammar police at one time or another. And if you’re a writer, you may have seen the grammar police in action and wondered, Are they editors? Are all editors and proofreaders like that? Perhaps you’ve had such a negative experience that you’re worried about putting your writing into the hands of an editor who may potentially tear your work apart. Read more

Writers have many options when it comes to formatting speech in their writing. Every genre will have its norm, and every author will have their own style. Keep in mind that the point of dialogue tags and action beats is to engage the reader by immersing them more deeply in the scene. Formatting dialogue is therefore key to keeping readers engaged and the story moving forward. Read more

Ask anyone and they’ll likely say that writing a book is a hard job. Ask a writer and they’ll likely say that starting to write a book is a harder job. I can sympathize. For many years I’ve desired to write a book, and my biggest hurdle has been the first five to ten pages. I guess it's because those pages are arguably the most important. Read more

A query letter is a formal letter that a writer sends to literary agents or publishers to introduce themselves and their work with the goal of securing representation or publication of their book. Agents and publishers receive letters and unsolicited manuscripts every day, and they are masters at skimming the first line or so of a query letter to determine whether that author's book is a match for them. Writing your query letter, therefore, requires careful planning and attention to detail to capture an agent or publisher's attention. Read more