Describing Eyes in Writing
Describing eyes in writing is pretty important—and it has a long history. Feast your eyes on this list of clichés about eyes! You won’t need an eagle eye.
Episode 17: Anna Staniszewski, Children's Author
On this month's episode, children's author Anna Staniszewski chats about her path to publication, writing for different age groups, and what it takes to make it as a full-time author.
How to Write a Good Ending
This video is all about how to write a good ending to a story. Whether you are looking to be traditionally published or are writing picture books, the main key to writing a good ending is to be familiar with what your audience wants. We’ve also got you covered on writing endings for various genres—from romance to fantasy.
The Importance of a Nuanced Character Arc
Few of us change overnight. We might wake up one morning and realize we’ve changed, but when we look back we can see it was the result of a million little things, day after day, that brought us to our current state. How do we build a character arc like this—showing gradual, compelling, believable change?
Anthropomorphic Animals In Children's Fiction
Anthropomorphic animals in children’s fiction are common, but are these characters the best approach when you’re writing for young readers? Let’s talk about this popular topic for children’s writers by defining what an anthropomorphic animal is.
Episode 26: Tami Charles, Children’s Book Author
New York Times Bestselling children's book author Tami Charles joins the Good Story Podcast to talk about experimenting with verse, amplifying the stories of girls of color, and writing what you feel.
How to Write Picture Book Description
With only 600 words to work with, there’s not much space for picture book description. Let’s make every word count and bring your story to life.
Story Mastermind: Picture Book Mini-Mastermind
Story Mastermind is our small group writing workshop. We'll tell you a little bit about the program, but mostly we will be talking today about picture book premise, and how to make sure that your story has strong bones and how to tell a compelling picture book story in today's market.
Ways to Hook a Reader
You do need to clear a pretty high bar to impress an agent, a publisher, or a reader once you get published. The opening pages are a really, really important part of this. Adding some character relatability and a little bit of conflict goes a long way in hooking a reader.
Swearing In Children’s Books
This is everybody's favorite fucking topic. It is swearing in children's books. Very controversial. Keep in mind the power gatekeepers have in children’s publishing.
Unconventional Writing
Publishing loves its buckets. In children's books, there are several buckets that you need to fit into, with word count guidelines and all of that. There are buckets and tropes in adult publishing as well. Books that don't lend themselves easily to categorization can be a really difficult sell.
Picture Book Lessons
Don't teach in your picture book. Do not preach. Do not talk down to the reader. Kids are lectured and told what to do all day every day, and they feel disempowered. So, the strongest possible way to get a message across is to have a child go through something, learn something, practice something, maybe even teach something to somebody else, without actually coming out and directly saying the words.
Pacing in Writing
Pacing is the engine that keeps that story going and keeps your reader's interest level high. One of the most important things that I teach when it comes to pacing with writing is the balance of action and the information. Information is dense. It moves slowly. Action is fast. It moves quickly. It has nothing to do with page count, but everything to do with the balance of what's in those pages.
Writing Kid Characters
The number one thing that you have to know about writing a kid character is that they should be relatable to kids. This seems like a very dumb thing to say, but a lot of picture books that I read are written more from the point of view of an adult or for an adult point of view.
Avoid Overwriting
Overwriting happens often in early drafts, as writers try to get the story down and figure they’ll fix things later. Sometimes details draw us in, but often they can distract readers, pushing them to think about unrelated things ... and then to stop reading.
Interrupted Dialogue
If you've been wondering how to format interrupted dialogue in your manuscript, here's a quick answer.
Help! I’m Distracted from Writing.
Getting distracted from writing has always been a challenge for writers. But it’s more acute these days, as lockdowns and quarantines interfere with the habits we once built. Here are the top four ways we tend to get distracted from writing, with troubleshooting solutions for each.
Write What You Know
Here's a video follow-up to our blog post on the old writing adage "write what you know." A closer look at what this expression really means and how you can make it work in your writing.
Writing Secondary Characters
Even though narratives tend to focus on the life of one character – sometimes a few in multiple POV – the people in that character’s life are equally important. Giving them personalities, sometimes backstories and arcs of their own, are what make the narrative as a whole more realistic.