Innehållsförteckning för May/June 2021 från Writer's Digest

POETIC FORM: RIME COUÉE The rime couée is a French sestet (or six-line stanza) form that has a three-part rhyme scheme and variable line lengths. Here are the basic guidelines: • Six-line stanzas• Eight syllables in lines one, two, four, and five• Six syllables in lines three and six• Rhyme scheme: aabccb The poem can be a single stanza or run for several. Here is a four-stanza example by a Poetic Asides reader: Robert Lee Brewer is senior editor of WD and the author of Smash Poetry Journal. → SHARE YOUR POETIC VOICE: If you’d like to see your own poem in the pages of Writer’s Digest, check out the Poetic Asides blog (WritersDigest.com/write-better-poetry/poetry-prompts) and search for the most recent WD Poetic Form Challenge.…

Minding Your Metadata Most authors who dive into the path of self-publishing know they’ll need to vet and hire team members like editors and cover designers, write marketing copy, as well as market and promote their books. But did you ever think you’d need to be a data scientist? Just add it to the list of tasks, but not to worry, it’s not as hard as it sounds. The term metadata gets tossed around often in the world of indie publishing. But you don’t really need to be a computer programmer or scientist of any kind to understand it—metadata is simply data about data. It’s a way to describe and label information to make it easier to find and use. When you type a word or phrase into Google, the…

Mia P. Manansala Arsenic and Adobo (Mystery, May, Berkley) “A culinary cozy in which a woman returns to her Midwestern town to escape a failed relationship, only to deal with her family’s declining restaurant, matchmaking aunties, and her jerk high school sweetheart who has the bad taste to die in her family’s restaurant.” WRITES FROM: Chicago. PRE-ADOBO: My first book was a murder mystery set at a comic book convention and featured a queer, Filipino-American female protagonist. It won a grant, got me into Pitch Wars (shout out to my mentor, Kellye Garrett), and got me an agent, but when it was submission time, the most common feedback from editors was “Love it, don’t know how to sell it.” I didn’t purposely write a more “marketable” book for my second…

In late January, WD joined Chris Bohjalian in his writing office via video call to talk about his newest book, Hour of the Witch. Like many of Bohjalian’s novels, it features a misunderstood but strong female protagonist, Mary Deerfield, who has to fight her way past rumors, false accusations, injustices, and the control of inept (and insecure) men in power to try to get the life she wants. “I love my heroine,” says Bohjalian. “I love Mary Deerfield. She’s courageous. And like many of my female heroines—Serafina Bettini, Alexis Remnick, Cassie Bowden—she’s deeply human. I mean, these are powerful, powerful women and they’re human beings. They’re imperfect, but they are so damn courageous.” Mary Deerfield is courageous. She’s a 17th-century Puritan woman married to an abusive man nearly two decades…

Dear FYSA, I just signed with an agent with my urban fantasy debut and in our call, I mentioned I also have an adult horror and an adult historical fiction complete. The agent asked to read and then reached out to say he loved all of them and would be shopping them simultaneously in order to give me the best chance at placing one of them. When I talked to my critique group, none of them had heard of this technique before. Is this something you do? Signed, All Pots on the Stove Dear LotsaPots, No, it isn’t something I personally do. I don’t especially feel this is a good plan for a debut foundation in traditional publishing. And further, if the agent is pitching all three of those books…

TO ENTER: Send your story via email to yourstorycontest@aimmedia.com (entries must be pasted directly into the body of the email; attachments will not be opened). Entries without a name and mailing address will be disqualified. NOTE: WD editors select the top 12 finalists and post them on our website (WritersDigest.com/Your-Story-Competition). Join us in August, when readers will vote for their favorite to help pick the top 10 winners! Follow @WritersDigest on Twitter for Your Story updates. The winner will be published in a future issue of Writer’s Digest. DON’T FORGET: Your name and mailing address. One entry per person. DEADLINE: June 28, 2021.…

When I think about curiosity, I think of science and that curious drive people have to constantly explore, experiment, and expand our explanations of the universe around and within us. So it only makes sense that we focus on freelance opportunities in science magazines for this issue. Some of these magazines expect their writers to be scientists. Others expect their writers to be journalists who know their science. But there are also opportunities for writers to break in and share that next fun science-related piece, whether it’s aimed at the scientific community or people with a general interest in scientific topics. These three science magazines may be a good fit for your curiosity. Discover (DiscoverMagazine.com) In multiple locations on the Discover website, they implore readers to “stay curious.” Published eight…

Skilled presenters are the life blood of any writing conference. Most will know their value, and professional experience has set the bar for how they expect to be engaged. In order to help them be the best speaker possible for your event: 1. Never ask them to work for free. Everyone’s time is valuable, and it’s bad form to ask a writer or editor to participate in your event without offering some kind of compensation, even if it’s just a small honorarium. The person you’re inviting should also never be out-of-pocket for transportation or hotel costs as this implies that the conference is doing them a favor, rather than the other way around. 2. Be specific about what you’re hoping to glean from them. It helps to be very detailed…

Raise your hand if you subscribed to WD in June of 1973. If you did, you’ll know where we got the inspiration for this issue (and the cute, tiny cat drawings). It was the first “Issue of Curiosity” and when we spotted it while digging through the WD archives for our 100th anniversary last year, the idea of curiosity struck us as a particularly compelling theme. After all, all writers are curious. Whether we’re examining the events of our own lives, or researching a topic for a nonfiction piece, or want to tell a story of an imaginary person, the curiosity behind the questions of how and why something happened or could happen is what drives writers to put pen to paper. That sentiment is echoed throughout this issue. Most…

“I can’t write humor because I’m not funny.” The main obstacle to writing humor is the self-assigned label of not being funny. The assessment might be accurate, which would explain why you only have 13 Instagram followers. But the core assumption is wrong. Being funny is a necessity for performing comedy—it’s impossible to fake funny in front of an audience. It’s more accurate to proclaim, “I can’t do comedy because I’m not funny.” Humor writing has a different requisite—creativity. Imagination drives funny, and just about everyone has an imagination. Otherwise, no writer would attempt to write a novel. So, anyone can learn the fundamentals of humor writing. Let’s use a simple brainstorming exercise to illustrate the first step in humor conception. Consider the possible uses of two round barstool cushions.…

One of the things I love most about writing historical fiction is the initial sensation when my curiosity is piqued, when I stumble across a person or event in history and immediately feel an urge to delve into the historical record. I know I’ve found the topic for my next book when that curiosity becomes a running conversation in my mind, a series of questions that must be answered, an imperative to follow the trail of history. When I first read about Evangelina Cisneros, one of the heroines in my next novel The Most Beautiful Girl in Cuba, curiosity took hold and wouldn’t let me go. I came across her name while researching the Cuban fight for independence from Spain and the Spanish-American War. It was a subject I’d been…

Fair Use Sharpen your pencils for a pop quiz: Which of these qualifies as a “fair use” of another’s work? A. When I use part of an old work that is in the public domain. (Nope. If something is in the public domain, it is no longer—or never was—protected by copyright and you are free to use it.) B. When there isn’t a copyright line or symbol, it’s fair game. (Nope. If you don’t see copyright symbol, it is still protected by copyright.) C. I used fewer than 300 words of another’s work. (Nope. There isn’t a certain word count or percentage for fair use—a common misperception.) “Fair use” is when it’s OK to use a portion of someone else’s copyrighted work without permission under certain circumstances. The tricky thing…

As a child, Hill was an avid reader, encouraged by her grandmother—who was always reading—and mother. She found herself entranced by the worlds of science fiction and fantasy, but there was a glaring issue: There was never a Black girl on the covers of the books she loved. She was never able to see herself as the main character. Hill explained, “Especially being biracial, there’s even kind of a smaller niche where you don’t really see what it’s like for the character to have to straddle kind of two worlds in that way.” Like most, she wrote short stories from a young age. Then she found herself writing fan fiction, which introduced her to story mechanics—like developing plot—while borrowing someone else’s characters. It also gave her the opportunity to get…

For my second column, I chose to speak to an editor at Good Housekeeping (GH) who is looking for freelance writers who have been published. The publication has a storied legacy (it is turning 136 years old this year), and has an audience of 55 million readers across all its platforms. With such a huge readership, it is crucial to craft your pitch so it will capture an editor’s attention. My Estelle’s Edge (aka pro tip) for eliciting interest is to write the opening of your pitch as if it could be the first paragraph of the article. You can start with a dramatic anecdote, a question, compelling (or scary) statistics, or an intriguing quote. For example, in the first pitch detailed here on how the shortage of school nurses…

Why leave science to the scientists and journalists? There’s plenty of room for the fiction writers who dream of future discoveries and innovations. As such, here are three magazines that publish science-fiction stories. ANALOG SCIENCE FICTION AND FACT (AnalogSF.com) Analog actually publishes fiction and nonfiction—and poetry! For science fiction, the editors want “stories in which some aspect of future science of technology is so integral to the plot that, if that aspect were removed, the story would collapse.” The magazine pays eight to 10 cents per word for short fiction (up to 20,000 words) and six cents per word for serial fiction (40,000 to 80,000 words). Writers can submit their work via Analog’s online submission form (Analog.MagazineSubmissions.com). ASIMOV’S SCIENCE FICTION (Asimovs.com) Asimov’s Science Fiction focuses purely on science fiction (and…

BOOKS FOR THE CURIOUS The editors of WD recommend books that satisfy curiosities you didn’t know you had. What’s it like being a Jewish U.S. ambassador to the Czech Republic and live in a house formerly occupied by Nazis? What if your spouse claimed your baby wasn’t a baby, but something else entirely? What would your childhood be like if your existence was a crime? And how can this serious topic be approached through humor? What would the world be like if humans disappeared? (A question we’ve thought about a lot during the pandemic…) How can a well-known myth become elevated? (Something many writers wonder!) What does it take to find happiness in the wake of tragedy? (Warning: This book will make you cry.) What would life be like if…

Originally from Florida, CHANEL CLEETON (ChanelCleeton.com) grew up on stories of her family’s exodus from Cuba following the events of the Cuban Revolution. Her passion for politics and history continued during her years spent studying in England, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in international relations from Richmond, The American International University in London, and a master’s degree in Global Politics from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Chanel also received her Juris Doctor from the University of South Carolina School of Law. She is the New York Times bestselling author of Next Year in Havana, When We Left Cuba, and The Last Train to Key West. Her new book, The Most Beautiful Girl in Cuba, comes out in May. ESTELLE ERASMUS, an award-winning journalist and writing coach,…

My last drink was on November 29, 2015. I joined co-workers for after-work drinks at Fanelli’s pub in SoHo. Among typical work-related chats, we also talked about how we moved to New York City to pursue our creative passions. We didn’t have enough time to write or audition or dance or paint because we didn’t have time in our packed schedules with day jobs and trying to stay sane as election year approached and other human-related strife. Several pints later, we parted ways to walk to our respective trains. While I enjoyed my Sunday Funday beer buzz, I was also hyperaware of the fact I had just spent four hours in a pub. Talking about how I don’t have time to write. In those four hours, the sunny afternoon turned…

Setting Consider this: Evocative writing in which characters come to life so fully that you’d recognize them as readily as, say, a neighbor or aunt. Now consider: Did that literary wondrousness take place in an amorphous place and time, a setting so vague that the characters might as well be floating around on a cloud? I think I know the answer: nope! Yet, setting is too often underdeveloped in both works-in-progress as well as, truth be told, in some professionally published work. Setting is the element we tend to ignore in favor of the more supposedly exciting components, character and plot. We relegate setting to simply serve as a backdrop for story. One reason writers tend to ignore setting is that we’re so often warned not to start with long…

Markus Hoffmann, who recently turned 50, was born and raised in Germany. He studied English and Russian literature in Munich, and abroad in Moscow, and at Hertford College, Oxford. He moved to the U.K. in 1997 and to the U.S. in 2004. He joined the agency he now co-owns, Regal Hoffmann & Associates, in 2006. Hoffmann considers his business partner, Joseph Regal, a role model. “He’s one of the most outstanding editors I’ve ever encountered and taught me early on that your job as an agent is to help your client write the best possible version of the book they want to write,” Hoffmann says. “He also told me—and allowed me—never to take on a new client or project just because it was sellable.” Hoffmann says he does what he…

WRITER’S DIGEST: WritersDigest.com The online hub for everything Writer’s Digest, our main website got a facelift in mid-2020 and is now bigger and better than ever. Join one of the writing challenges, get writing and publication advice from bestselling authors, and learn how you can enter any of our six writing competitions. You can also sign up for our newsletters to get highlights and inspiration each week. WRITER’S DIGEST UNIVERSITY: WritersOnlineWorkshops.com Take intensive writing classes taught by world-class instructors at Writer’s Digest University. Whether you want to improve your copy editing skills, write the first draft of your novel or memoir, or learn tips for querying agents, the WDU collection of courses, boot camps, and virtual conferences has what you’re looking for. WRITER’S DIGEST TUTORIALS: Tutorials.WritersDigest.com If you prefer your…

A majority of budding screenwriters toil away for years on a screenplay and wonder if there is an end in sight. They’re lost in plot and character and have written themselves into a corner. Their first 20 pages are a slog, the second act is vapid, and the third act doesn’t punch like they had imagined. They’re ready to throw in the towel. This is a common pitfall of many screenwriters. When starting a new screenplay, choose a story idea that has narrative legs—connective tissue that entails a beginning, middle, and end. You have a clear visualization of who the key players are—the protagonist, antagonist, and secondary characters. Another key component is that screenwriting is meant for a visual medium. Can you visualize this story on the silver screen? Also…

Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference (MCWC) Offering a mixed-genre emerging writers’ workshop for those who are attending a conference for the first time as well as seminars on publishing for seasoned writers ready to publish their manuscript, MCWC has been held annually for 32 years. Their goal is to produce a diverse, prestigious, and equitable event. WHEN: August 5–7, 2021. WHERE: Virtual. PRICE: $475. One-on-one consultations with writers, agents, and editors are available for $60/session. Consultations are limited and are on a first-come, first-served basis. WHAT MAKES THIS CONFERENCE UNIQUE: Open to writers at all levels of development, attendees can expect to meet those who are just starting out as well as those with MFAs, PhDs, and published books. “Our diversity (by all metrics) is our strength,” says executive director Lisa…