Innehållsförteckning för January 2017 från Writer's Digest

1 The Next Big Thing A blockbuster author with more than 100 titles in print knows a thing or two about staying ahead of trends. Romance novelist Debbie Macomber (WD Interview, Page 44) shares her advice for keeping your writerly eye on the future, alongside other expert insights. 2 Your Personal Top 10 Writing Your Legacy co-author Richard Campbell (“A Life Well Written,” Page 8) delves into 10 essential ways for memoir writers to mine for material. 3 Great Markets You’ve Been Missing Starting in this issue, the Standout Markets column (Page 60) will now include online-exclusive opportunities alongside our trio of book publishers, literary journals and magazine markets. View the full submission guidelines for our first featured web market, Narratively. To find all of the above online companions to…

FAN FAVORITE I’m a longtime subscriber to Writer’s Digest. I’ve published two works: the novel Dolphins’ Run and the nonfiction guide Become a 911 Dispatcher. When my copy of WD is delivered, the first thing I turn to is Barbara Poelle’s “Funny You Should Ask” column. I appreciate her insights, honest to-the-point responses and, most of all, humor. I hope Poelle’s column has a long run with WD. I look forward to it in each issue! SPOTTED ON TWITTER Get your hands on October’s @WritersDigest. Lots of great nuggets for established and new #writers. —@TheStoryPsych Loved Susan Shapiro’s tips in [October] @WritersDigest: If you keep working hard, someone will notice. —@SusanjBreen @jessicastrawser Loved your interview with @junotdiaz in [October] @WritersDigest! Biggest takeaway: Read beyond your comfort zone! —@SharifKhanBooks @mikemartinez72 Loved…

POETIC FORM: BYR A THODDAID The byr a thoddaid is a Welsh form that can vary in length from a single four-line poem to a series of quatrains (four-line stanzas). Regardless of length, each quatrain is divided into two couplets (two-line stanzas), which appear in alternating order. One couplet contains eight syllables in both lines with an aa end rhyme. The other has a 10-syllable first line and a six-syllable second line, with the final syllable rhyming with the eighth of the first line. The opening of the second line then echoes the close of the first line. Let’s look at an example by a Poetic Asides reader, in which the echoes are highlighted in bold and the rhyming syllables of the 10-6 couplet are italicized for clarity.…

Choose your whole setting carefully, scene by scene—the time of day or night, the climate, the weather, the landscape, the seascape, the country, the part of the country—and you will be able to convey more effectively the emotions your characters are experiencing. You may have decided on a setting before you thought about a plot, but setting can also propel you to discover ideas not originally conceived. Many years ago, confident I had finally finished a publishable draft of my first novel, I went in search of an editor. New York University was offering a weeklong workshop in Vermont that promised new writers the opportunity to get feedback from established editors. I packed my bags and off I went, certain that the editor assigned to my novel would be so…

THE SWEETNESS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PIE by Alan Bradley (2009): The first in the series starring 11-year-old Flavia de Luce, set in an English village in 1950. A DARK AND STORMY MURDER by Julia Buckley (2016): The start of the Writer’s Apprentice Mystery series featuring aspiring writer cum amateur sleuth Lena London, set in the quaint town of Blue Lake, Ind. A MOST CURIOUS MURDER by Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli (2016): A Little Library Mystery, the first in the series starring amateur sleuth Jenny Weston, set in the charming small town of Bear Falls, Mich., and inspired by Alice in Wonderland. MURDER AT THE VICARAGE by Agatha Christie (1930): Our introduction to the iconic Miss Marple set the elderly spinster in then-contemporary England in the…

Out of more than 400 entries, Writer’s Digest editors and forum members chose this winner, submitted by Jenny Maattala of Bismarck, N.D. “You don’t have enough points, sir” She spit the words out, jagged and spiteful, through clenched teeth. They’d decided early on, back when chills rolled down their limbs with every touch and the excitement of love was tangible, that they were too urbane for run-of-the-mill fighting. Instead, rather than yelling at him for leaving wet towels on the floor and staying out late, or berating her when she locked keys in the car or refused to delete exes’ numbers from her phone, they simply added or subtracted points to stay accountable. To their friends this seemed a futile way to resolve issues, but to them it was an…

When I began experimenting with first person, I had a hard time conveying a sense of immediacy for my narrator. I kept falling prey to a trap I call retrospective retelling. This is the tendency to relate the story by looking back as if it’s all already happened. I found it much harder in first person to make every scene an actual scene, the real-time narration of an event. Instead, the narrator seemed to relay the story from some vantage point in the future. I found myself using phrases like “I didn’t know then that …” and “Later I understood that …” which prevented the reader from feeling present in the moment. I decided I had to choose one or the other: Either the character was narrating the events as…

CONFERENCE GUIDE JANUARY 2017 • Keep in mind that there may be more than one workshop in each listing. • These workshops are listed alphabetically by state, country or continent. • Unless otherwise indicated, rates include tuition (T) only. Sometimes the rates also include airfare (AF), some or all meals (M), accommodations (AC), ground transportation (GT), materials (MT) or fees (F). • When you find workshops that interest you, be sure to call, email or check the website of the instructor or organization for additional information. • All listings are paid advertisements. CALIFORNIA GENRE-LA™ SPECULATIVE FICTION CREATIVE WRITING CONFERENCE, January 27–29, 2017 at the DoubleTree Hilton, Los Angeles West Side, CA. If you write Science Fiction, Fantasy, Steampunk, Cyberpunk, Horror, Military Science Fiction, Urban, Historical, Epic Fantasy, and/or Space Opera,…

Crafting Dynamic Dialogue by The Editors of Writer’s Digest Exceptional dialogue isn’t just important when writing fiction—it’s essential. Crafting Dynamic Dialogue will give you the techniques and examples you need to impress your readers, with instruction from bestselling authors and teachers. They’ll show you how to understand the role of dialogue in reader engagement, use dialect and jargon effectively, set the pace and tone, and more. ITEM #S8316 RETAIL: $18.99 YOUR PRICE: $13.08* Author in Progress by Therese Walsh, Editor, and the Members of Writer Unboxed Written by members of the popular Writer Unboxed website, Author in Progress is filled with practical, candid essays to help you reach the next rung on the publishing ladder. It’s the perfect no-nonsense guide for excelling at every step of the novel-writing process, from…

Now with these exciting features: • A one-year subscription to the online database at WritersMarket.com, updated year-round • Original how-to articles by industry leaders • New interviews with bestselling and award-winning writers • Up-to-date listings for contests, conferences, workshops and professional organizations • And more! ITEM #R1509**; 896 pages RETAIL: $29.99 YOUR PRICE: $18.99* ITEM #R1510; 896 pages RETAIL: $49.99 YOUR PRICE: $29.99* ITEM #R1511; 512 pages RETAIL: $29.99 YOUR PRICE: $18.99* ITEM #R1512; 336 pages RETAIL: $29.99 YOUR PRICE: $18.99* ITEM #R1514; 480 pages RETAIL: $29.99 YOUR PRICE: $18.99* ITEM #R1513; 416 pages RETAIL: $29.99 YOUR PRICE: $18.99* ITEM #R1515**; 336 pages RETAIL: $29.99 YOUR PRICE: $18.99* ALL ITEMS AVAILABLE NOW *Sales prices listed were correct at the time of publication but may fluctuate slightly. Visit the WD Shop…

More Than a Feeling I’ve interviewed enough authors over the years to know this: Even the most successful among them can remember with vivid clarity the tentative tingling of first sitting down to write a novel and feeling as if they had no idea what they were doing. In fact, some of them still experience that odd mingling of fearful uncertainty and exciting possibility, fueled by a creative drive that’s hard to define but impossible to deny. Welcome to the club. Whether you have your sights set on your first novel, your fourth or your 40th (Debbie Macomber, the subject of this issue’s WD Interview, has written novels numbering in the triple digits—and says she’ll never stop looking for ways to grow), the articles in this issue address the kinds…

Accurately portraying the complexities of different religions is no easy task. Depictions can often fall prey to stereotype in TV and movies, and fiction is equally susceptible—especially when writers find themselves trying to represent beliefs with which they aren’t intimately familiar. Distortions of a faith can take away from the nuance of our novels, as well as stunt our collective understanding. Here are a few debunked myths to keep your characters from becoming caricatures. Jerry Jenkins is a novelist (the Left Behind series) and biographer (Billy Graham, Hank Aaron, Walter Payton, Nolan Ryan) who has written 21 New York Times bestsellers and sold more than 70 million copies. He blogs at JerryJenkins.com and teaches writing at JerrysGuild.com. Brenda Janowitz is the author of five novels, most recently The Dinner Party.…

Helen Adams (formerly Zimmermann) got her start in publishing more than 20 years ago: first at Random House—where she became a director of advertising and promotion—then as author events director for an independent bookseller, where aspiring writers would often ask her how to get published. “I would always say, ‘You need to find an agent,’” Adams says. “After I said that a dozen times, a light went off and I thought, ‘Hey, why don’t I become an agent?’” So she did: In 2003, Zimmermann Literary was born. “For nonfiction, my dream project is one that has a clear market, is fresh, informative and entertaining, and has an author with a large platform,” she says. “For fiction, my dream project [is one that] makes me miss a meal.” Find Adams online…

“It doesn’t matter how many degrees you have. It doesn’t matter if you barely graduated high school like I did—I even married as a teenager. The key to success in any field is passion”. Warm and uplifting, yet undeniably real; comforting and familiar, yet surprisingly fresh; relatable and entertaining, yet comically self-deprecating; generous and humble, yet unabashedly successful: If Debbie Macomber herself seems like a living, breathing extension of the heartwarming romance and feel-good women’s fiction titles that have become her trademark, it’s no accident. And in an era where bestsellers lists sometimes seem dominated by an appetite for secret psychopaths, dystopian worlds and scandalous sex, it’s also refreshing. Because Macomber’s more than 200 million books in print worldwide are page-turning proof that happy endings still sell—big. And, looking back…

The narrator’s relationship to the story is determined by point of view. Each viewpoint allows certain freedoms in narration while limiting or denying others. Your goal in selecting a point of view is not simply finding a way to convey information, but telling it the right way—making the world you create understandable and believable. The following is a brief rundown of the three most common POVs and the advantages and disadvantages of each. FIRST-PERSON SINGULAR This POV reveals an individual’s experience directly through the narration. A single character tells a personal story, and the information is limited to the first-person narrator’s direct experience (what she sees, hears, does, feels, says, etc.). First person gives readers a sense of immediacy regarding the character’s experiences, as well as a sense of intimacy…

FOR YOUR WEB-FRIENDLY WRITING: Narratively ABOUT: “Narratively is a digital publication that prides itself on looking beyond the news headlines and click-bait, focusing instead on ordinary people with extraordinary stories. Our talented storytellers come with the passion projects they care about most—having combed our world’s big cities and hidden corners for the characters and narratives that mainstream media aren’t finding—the overlooked tales that enlighten us, connect us and capture our imagination.” FOUNDED: 2012. TRAFFIC: 475,000 monthly visitors. PAYMENT: Up to $300 for features, $100 for shorter stories. LENGTH: Varies—up to 4,000 words for reported or first-person stories. RECURRING SERIES: Ordinary Obituaries, Humans Behind the Headlines, The Naked Truth, Secret Lives. HOW TO SUBMIT: Submit pitches or completed stories via narratively.submittable.com/submit. DETAILED GUIDELINES: narrative.ly/contribute. WHAT STANDS OUT & WHY:…

JANE K. CLELAND (“Craft a Killer Cozy” Page 40) is the award-winning author of the Josie Prescott Antiques Mystery series, of which the 11th installment, Glow of Death, was released in November. Her book about the writing craft, Mastering Suspense, Structure & Plot, was published in April by WD Books. Cleland teaches at Lehman College, CUNY, where she is the director for the Program for Professional Communications. Find her online at janecleland.com. BRENT HARTINGER (“Rules for Writing Strong Sequels,” Page 16) is the author of 12 novels, the first of which, Geography Club, was adapted into a feature film. His latest title, teen thriller Three Truths and a Lie, hit bookshelves in August. Hartinger is also a screenwriter and currently has four scripts in development, including Decked, the animated story…

Two weeks ago, my friend forwarded an email from her elderly aunt, to whom she had given a copy of my debut novel. Her aunt wrote that despite her failing eyesight, she had read the book quickly and thoroughly enjoyed it. My first thought was, I wonder if I can get her to write a review on Amazon. My second thought was, I am a horrible person. Instead of appreciating the compliment, I was immediately looking to add another notch to my literary belt, another excuse to push a social media mention or a sale. It was just three short months since I’d become a published novelist, yet I was already letting my thirst for another post, another review, another 5-star rating take precedence over what was far more important—that…

Thoraiya Dyer 1 Crossroads of Canopy (fantasy, January 2017, Tor Books) “At the highest level of a gigantic rainforest, 13 kingdoms form the great city of Canopy, the relative safety of which apprentice-priestess Unar must abandon when her sister falls through the magical barrier that keeps demons trapped below.” WRITES FROM: Sydney, Australia. PRE-CROSSROADS: I completed unpublished manuscripts of many different speculative fiction subgenres before I started writing Crossroads of Canopy. My published short stories won or were nominated for Australian awards for fantasy, science fiction and young adult. TIME FRAME: After leaving work as a veterinarian to become a mother, I set my own deadline of a novel per year and pretty much stuck to it. ENTER THE AGENT: My agent is Evan Gregory from The Ethan Ellenberg…

A perceived “rule” that the opponent never changes basically reflects the routine use of this character as the embodiment of evil—a villain. Often villains are conceived as psychopaths or sociopaths with rigid personality disorders who by their nature resist change. But the opponent can and often does change, especially in dramas where the conflict is motivated meaningfully on both sides, as when good is pitted against good (e.g., the Kansas father who fears losing the farm versus the artistic son who desperately wants to leave). In such cases, the observations discussed in the body of this article apply equally. There are also stories that possess a plot technique known as the double reversal in which both the protagonist and the opponent experience a crucial insight into themselves when each learns…

Signer’s Remorse doesn’t exist in a vacuum. But this is your career—you get to decide who advocates for it. Dear FYSA, Agents’ submission guidelines routinely categorize fiction submissions as “commercial,” “upmarket” and “mainstream.” Can you explain the differences? I’d also find it helpful to have an example of a successfully published author or book from each. Sincerely, Category Curious Dear Curious, Pinpointing the genre is a fundamental aspect of being able to talk about your book, but the lines here can be a bit slippery, like shades on a color wheel blended into a murky goulash. First, let me clarify: You asked about three categories, but I don’t usually use the term “mainstream.” Maybe I’m splitting hairs, but in these broad terms I think mainstream and commercial are…

Characters demonstrate their behavior in four ways: through actions, dialogue, thoughts and feelings. Yet a great deal of information and detail included in a story doesn’t necessarily fall neatly into these categories. Setting descriptions, observations, philosophical musings, sensory imagery and more slip through the cracks between action, dialogue and thoughts. All of that in-between material constitutes your narrative voice. Think of narrative voice as the stream in which the story flows, the current carrying along key information a story needs to thrive. Or, if you prefer a more personified approach, think of narrative voice as an impartial court reporter sharing with the reader that Harry Potter is a wizard, that Jane Eyre doesn’t believe Mr. Rochester could love her, or that Gone Girl’s “Amazing Amy” is not the sweet, content…

1 Desert Nights, Rising Stars Writers Conference Inspiration doesn’t run dry at this university-sponsored conference. WHEN: Feb. 16–18, 2017. WHERE: Arizona State University, Tempe, Ariz. Sessions are held at the University Club, Old Main buildings and venues across campus. Nearby lodgings, such as the Tempe Mission Palms Hotel, are within walking distance of ASU. PRICE: $400. See website for details. WHAT MAKES THE CONFERENCE UNIQUE: Sponsored by ASU’s Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing, Desert Nights, Rising Stars aims to offer a community-based experience. “While the conference features numerous acclaimed faculty members, award-winning authors and experienced industry experts, our focus is less on [celebrating] the faculty than on how their knowledge can benefit budding authors,” conference coordinator Jake Friedman says. WHO IT’S PERFECT FOR: Established and emerging writers alike…

Mastering Suspense, Structure & Plot by Jane K. Cleland Suspense is one of the most powerful tools a writer has for captivating readers—but it isn’t just for thrillers. From mainstream fiction to memoir, suspense creates the emotional tension that keeps readers on the edge of their seats. Award-winning author Jane K. Cleland teaches you how to navigate genre conventions and build gripping tension to craft an irresistible page-turner. ITEM #T8757 RETAIL: $16.99 YOUR PRICE: $9.99* Creating Characters by The Editors of Writer’s Digest Populating your fiction with vivid characters is a sure way to captivate your readers. In this book, you’ll find timely advice and helpful instruction from bestselling authors. They’ll teach you how to build a believable protagonist, juggle multiple points of view, motivate your players with powerful objectives,…