Innehållsförteckning för March/April 2024 från Writer's Digest

The terminal smelled like disinfectant and heavy perfume, a mixture that gave Charles a headache on the spot. He shifted his body to the right, so that he was facing the stream of disembarking travelers. The Spanish ones had better faces than the tourists—better cheekbones, better lips, better hair. When he was younger, Charles would paint from life, but now he just snapped photos with his digital camera and painted from those. He loved that freedom, being able to have anyone’s face in his pocket. —The Vacationers, Emma Straub (literary fiction) Bunting ordered a feta cheese omelet and a cup of coffee, and the counterman turned away toward the coffee machine. Headlines and rows of black print at Bunting’s elbow seemed to lift up from the surface of the folded…

A few students recently shared their plan of completing the 30-day NaNoWriMo challenge, then emailing the brilliant pages of their next Great American Novel to an agent who’d quickly land a six-figure advance with a top publishing house. Yet, in over three decades as an author and mentor to thousands of writers, I can tell you: that almost never happens. Most books take a long time to gel and don’t make a lot of money. On the upside, there are other paths to write, publish, or collaborate on a great book project that won’t take as long. But first, figure out what your goal is: to create a literary masterpiece? Supplement your income or change your career? Once you’re clear on your endgame, consider these different strategies to help you…

Writing a series is a massive undertaking. It requires a lot of time and even more commitment. Think hard before you choose to take it on. But writing a series can be magical, fun, and exciting. It can feel like home because you get to play around a world of your own making. Even more so, when you’ve successfully introduced a character or characters who resonate with the readers and can serve as anchors throughout the series, the time and energy you spend will be worth the sweat and tears (yes, there will be tears) it takes to write the series. There are two things that keep the reader coming back to a series: the characters and the author. If we’re talking about a series like R. L. Stine’s Goosebumps,…

In 2018, Tommy Orange took the literary world by storm with his debut novel, There There, which told the story of 12 people from Native communities slowly discovering how their lives are connected as they all work to get to the present-day Big Oakland Powwow. In addition to being named one of the best books of the year by such varied organizations as The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, Time, GQ, Entertainment Weekly, and O, The Oprah Magazine (among many others), it was also a Pulitzer Prize finalist and winner of the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and the PEN/Hemingway Award. Orange’s highly anticipated second novel, Wandering Stars, is out now, and will firmly establish Orange as one of the…

Joe wanted a reason to live. He was sitting on the corner of Lexington and 53rd, surrounded by his few worldly possessions and a cardboard sign that read “Disabled Veteran, Please Help” propped up against a metal jar with a few coins in it. He walks with a permanent limp after taking shrapnel in his left leg, but the physical pain he can live with. Last night, he woke up in a cold sweat, kicking and cursing, trying to escape the memories of the broken bodies and the sounds of artillery when he heard someone say, “Hang on, old man.” Old man? He will be 36 in November. Once fully aware, he was grateful that the passerby didn’t kick him out of a sound sleep to call him a baby…

When I started querying in 2010, one of the agents I approached requested a paper manuscript. I printed my manuscript and sent it in a padded envelope. I received a reply by mail a few months later; a brief, kind rejection signed personally by the agent. It felt a little quaint—a holdover from a gentler pre-internet industry. Publishing has changed a lot in the last decade, and I’ve had a front-row view. Alongside pursuing my publication dreams, I’ve built a career in editorial, starting as an assistant at Pan Macmillan and ending as senior editor at Chicken House, a U.K. children’s publisher. Now, I’m associate literary agent with The Bindery Agency in the U.S. The volume of submissions received has increased exponentially. From 2015–2022, while I ran the Times/Chicken House…

CHARACTER 20 QUESTIONS INSTRUCTIONS: It’s time to interview your character! Whether you’re imagining sitting down for coffee across from the hero of your latest project or taking a stroll with a well-loved character of popular media, use the answers they give you to write a short piece with this new information in mind. And if you’re a nonfiction writer, you can use this list to interview your past self or think more deeply about the other people who feature in your work. 1. When was the last time you were vulnerable with someone? What was the context? 2. What is your biggest secret? 3. What are you most afraid of? 4. Describe your earliest childhood memory. 5. What was the hardest obstacle you’ve had to overcome? 6. What are five…

I was recently asked who my favorite fictional characters were, and I had trouble giving an answer. But it wasn’t because I couldn’t think of any. It was because the characters I like the most are the ones that live the longest in my head—and those aren’t the ones I would’ve expected. The assumption is that “favorite” characters would indicate some sort of positive affinity for them. But that’s not the case for me. In fact, my favorite characters aren’t particularly likable at all, but they make up for it with their complexity. Take Briony Tallis from Ian McEwan’s Atonement, for example. Early in the novel, she’s an arrogant, demanding, and immature 13-year-old who makes a few horrible choices that she thinks will protect (and infuriate) her big sister. By…

For many indie authors, the idea of publishing a book is exciting. But it can also be nerve-wracking, especially when it comes to the printing of the book. Offset printing is a printing technique in which ink is transferred—or offset—from a printing plate to a rubber blanket to your paper. Unlike print-on-demand, which can be printed a single book at a time, offset printers print in bulk, often with a minimum order quantity (MOQ) of 500–1,000 books. This can be a pricy endeavor, and the process can be daunting, but authors do it every day. So, how do you find a printer, and what do you talk to them about? DOMESTIC VS. OVERSEAS BOOK PRINTING When it comes to offset printing, there are two primary options: print in the United…

When I hear the term method acting, I immediately think of actors like Jeremy Strong having trouble referring to his “Succession” character, Kendall Roy, in the third person or Austin Butler going literal years without seeing his family as he was preparing to play Elvis. As an outsider (read, media-obsessed plebian) I consume coverage of method actors and the lengths they go to with morbid fascination—a mix of awe, horror, and a few eye rolls. You change the way you talk, eat, and move through the world, singularly focused on walking marathons in a character’s shoes. How engrossing! How dedicated! How (honestly, but affectionately) bizarre! Couldn’t be me, I so cavalierly thought. Then I got asked by the lovely people of Writer’s Digest to discuss my own relationship to characters…

You just finished writing your book. You’ve sent it off to a handful of readers and are waiting with all the patience of a caffeinated squirrel for that coveted reader feedback. After what feels like eternity, it finally comes. And there you see it. The note that says they didn’t connect to your unlikable main character. Intentionally unlikable or not, protagonists who cause the reader to disconnect from the story can doom a manuscript. Reader feedback is a tricky beast, and it’s up to the writer to interpret it and decide how to move forward when that feedback isn’t positive. Before you hurl your computer out a window, take a moment to breathe and answer a couple questions. Do you understand the criticism? Decoding reader feedback can be difficult. “I…

Character voice is the way our characters speak inwardly to themselves and outwardly to other people. Like with your own voice, it has degrees, modulations, and changes in pitch. How you talk to yourself is different and sometimes maybe even crueler than the way you’d talk to your best friend or a stranger in line at the library. It is the same with your characters. But what makes a great character voice? It can’t just boil down to doing character interview sheets. If that were the case, crafting a voice like Dracula’s or every Sherlock Holmes iteration would be easy. Here are 15 exercises that task you with digging deeper to find your character’s voice. 1. Prop Improv Writers have a lot to learn from improv actors and the art…

As we met to discuss her winning novel, Claire Fraise said something that resonates through every part of her writing and publishing journey: “I just try to keep a curious mindset and to explore and to keep doing something to move myself in the direction where I want to be going. Even when it can feel challenging.” After falling in love with dystopian YA fiction while reading series like The Hunger Games and The Maze Runner, she asked herself, “Why can’t I try writing one of my own?” For two years, she did nothing but think about her characters and write. Then she self-published that novel, titled Imperfect. She was only 16 years old. “What really attracted me to self-publishing was that I would be able to hold on to…

TO ENTER: Email your entry to YourStoryContest@aimmedia.com with the subject line “Your Story #129.” Entries must be pasted directly into the body of the email; attachments will not be opened. Include your name and mailing address. Entries without a name or mailing address will be disqualified. NOTE: WD editors select the top six entries and post them on our website (WritersDigest.com/your-story-competition). Join us online in April, when readers will vote for their favorite to help choose three winners. Follow @WritersDigest on Instagram for Your Story updates. The winners will be published in a future issue of Writer’s Digest. DON’T FORGET: Your name and mailing address. One entry per person. DEADLINE: April 22, 2024.…

In September 2018, the New York Times Modern Love editors, Daniel Jones and Miya Lee, put out a call for 100-word essays to run in a series called Tiny Love Stories (TLS). The only requirements are that the essays are true and unpublished. I spoke with 13 freelance writers who have written Tiny Love Stories about how they successfully crafted their personal stories into publishable pieces. Here, they share their wisdom from the submission trenches. BEST PRACTICES FOR THE SUBMISSIONS PROCESS Although the column is called Tiny Love Stories, editor Miya Lee isn’t interested solely in romantic relationships. Barbara Field wrote about her friendship with an 8-year-old neighbor in her NYC apartment building. Humorist Beth Levine had luck with a quirky piece about “a love story between two birds who…

What’s it about?” That’s a question that writers are often asked. Whether the questioner is a reader at a book festival, a friend or family member, an agent or editor, the writer must come up with a compelling, yet pithy, answer. Usually, the writer answers with a brief plot summary or premise. “It’s about a girl who is so unhappy with her home life in Kansas that she tries to run away with her dog, but suddenly a tornado seemingly sweeps her, her house, and her dog away to an alternate reality, a land called Oz.” This answer focuses on the protagonist, her sidekick (the dog), her internal conflict (unhappy with her home life), her external conflict (running away), the inciting incident (tornado), and a surprising twist (landing in an…

For those of us who spent our childhoods with one eye focused on our toys and trinkets, waiting for them to come to life and offer us their friendship, we know a thing or two about the disappointment in the law of diminishing returns. The older we get, the more we look away, the less we believe. Despite the heartbreak of wanting the things we love to love us back, giving voice and personality to our prized possessions is one of the earliest ways we develop characters. In Allie Millington’s debut middle-grade novel, Olivetti, the story is told from dual perspectives: a 12-year-old boy named Ernest Brindle and a 60-year-old typewriter named Olivetti. In it, Olivetti is filled with the stories Ernest’s mother Beatrice used to write on him, memories…

YASMIN ANGOE (YasminAngoe.com) is the author of Her Name Is Knight and a first-generation Ghanaian American currently residing in South Carolina with her family. She’s served in education for nearly 20 years and works as a developmental editor. Yasmin received the 2020 Eleanor Taylor Bland Crime Fiction Writers of Color Award from Sisters in Crime and is a member of numerous crime, mystery, and thriller organizations like Sisters in Crime, Crime Writers of Color, and International Thriller Writers. Follow her on X (Twitter) @yasawriter and on Instagram @author_yas. JENNIFER CHEN (JChenWriter.com) is a freelance journalist who has written for “Today,” The New York Times, Oprah Daily, Real Simple, and The Washington Post. She wrote a short story featured in the young adult anthology, First-Year Orientation, and her debut YA romance,…

CAPTURING CHARACTERS IN POETRY Poetry is not the first place many people turn to when discussing characters and character development. Most readers probably think of fiction and maybe creative nonfiction, but poetry? Probably not. Still, many of the oldest pieces of written literature were actually epic poems, including the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Odyssey. These poetic stories included well-developed plots and interesting characters. However, poets don’t have to write epics to capture characters in their poems. In fact, Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology collects the voices of more than 200 different characters, albeit dead characters. Nearly every poem in the collection is titled as the name of the narrator, who shares a bit about their life and death and the fictional town of Spoon River itself. These poems…

Ghost Pirate Gambit, From Chaos to Creativity: Building a Productivity System for Artists and Writers (Science fiction, nonfiction writing craft; Jessie Kwak Creative) WHY SELF-PUBLISH? I’ve been writing for a living for 10 years, dabbling in everything from blog posts for software companies to ghostwriting business books for thought leaders. I already knew I liked running a writing business, and I wanted to have as much control over the quality and marketing of my books as I could. Self-publishing my novels just made sense! HAD YOU CONSIDERED TRADITIONAL PUBLISHING? While I self-publish my fiction, my nonfiction writing and creativity books are published through a small press, Microcosm Publishing. I chose to work with them because they have fantastic marketing know-how and great distribution, so they can get my work in…

Kristin Ostby is an editor-turned-literary agent from the Midwest. After moving from Michigan to New York, Ostby began her career in publishing at Penguin Random House and rose to become a senior editor at Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers. Ostby has edited Tomie dePaola (Strega Nona), Stuart Gibbs (Spy School), Alex Morgan (The Kicks), Daniel Miyares (Float), Jessica Lawson (Nooks & Crannies), Heather Vogel Frederick (The Mother-Daughter Book Club), and Debbie Levy and Elizabeth Baddeley (I Dissent: Ruth Bader Ginsburg Makes Her Mark). She lives in Brooklyn and has two daughters. “My dream project is any manuscript I can’t put down,” Ostby says. “My clients are all pretty wonderful, and I hope to continue to find thoughtful, kind, diligent clients because the kinds of people you work with…

The most exquisitely developed characters in the world won’t make an impact unless those characterizations are clear and vivid in the pages of your story. Bringing characters to life on the page comprises a myriad of context and detail that, if done well, may seem invisible to readers, but which work together to create a full, cohesive picture in their minds of who your characters are, who they have been, and who they are becoming. It’s not an exaggeration to suggest that character is revealed in every moment, every choice, every reaction. Every detail in your story can be used intentionally to create and convey character and character arc. Elements of Characterization We learn who characters are the same way we get to know people in real life: We are…

It might seem like nonfiction writers get off easy when it comes to developing characters: We don’t have to create them from whole cloth, inventing layers of backstory and idiosyncrasy—the people we’re writing about already exist! But the work of translating a real person into a character on the page has its own messy, fraught challenges. There are the craft challenges of capturing the unknowable totality of a person (impossible) and the interpersonal challenges of facing people’s reactions to how you’ve described them (terrifying). Not to mention the exceedingly strange experience of turning yourself into a character, without the plausible deniability of autofiction. Writing About the Self In the early days of writing my memoir, Negative Space, I struggled to capture my teenage self. I had vague impressions of my…

Grand Prize They Stay by Claire Fraise Early Readers/Children’s Picture Books FIRST PLACE Read Island by Nicole Magistro HONORABLE MENTIONS Forever Home by Cathy Stenquist Mrs. R. Snugglesworth, Attorney-at-Law by Amy Flanagan Nature Parade by Nikki Samuels Siege of Herons: Collective Nouns Alphabetically by Ramona Wildeman The Three Little Pigs and the Rocket Project by Lynne Marie Genre Fiction FIRST PLACE Home News: A Novel of 1928 by JD Solomon HONORABLE MENTIONS Beneath the Maize by Stephen Goldhahn Coup de Grâce by Paul Centeno Crew of Exiles by Neal Holtschulte Dragon Seer: Deathborne by S. Kay Lanphear I Fail at the Afterlife by Anni Sezate In the Shadow of a Hoax by Maci Aurora Sins of the Lines by Sharhonda Exantus Swimming in the Rainbow by Rebecca Lochlann The Long…

There’s a reason why literary journals are perpetually popular among writers looking to get published: Like the magazines on this list, many of them are paying markets that publish fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. So, there’s room for most types of writers. Many literary journals have specific reading periods because their readers may include college students. Also, in a world increasingly filled with email and online form submissions, each of the following five markets offers writers the option of submissions by mail. So, whether your characters are found in poems, short stories, or personal essays, I hope you can find a good match for your writing here. AGNI (AGNIonline.bu.edu) AGNI is a literary magazine published twice per year that publishes poems, short stories, and essays. Housed at Boston University, the magazine…

This might be an odd take coming from a column designed to instruct you on how to world-build, but I think there aren’t many reasons to construct a new language. I know; it’s hard to believe. When we think about world-building, so many people think about the world of J. R. R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth; he is widely considered to be the father of world-building, as well as the father of conlangs (a constructed language specifically to be used in literature and other media). Tolkien’s Elvish languages are unique in that they have full grammatical completeness and act more like natural languages (a language that developed naturally, like Japanese or Hindi) than conlangs. Although the Elvish languages of Middle-earth are some of the most widely respected, Star Trek’s Klingon and Dothraki…

Most mysteries and thrillers I’ve read lately feature chapters alternating between characters. It makes sense why that’s a popular approach—switching to another point of view after a tense chapter not only makes readers want to keep turning pages, but it also keeps readers wondering whom they should trust. Plus, it allows writers to drop in more clues readers might not get to see if there’s only one POV character. That’s why, when I read two back-to-back mystery novels each featuring a single narrator, they caught my attention. Frontlist The Last Caretaker by Jessica Strawser (Lake Union, Book club fiction/Mystery, December 2023) SYNOPSIS: Katie’s life is changing. Fresh off a divorce, she moves back to a suburb of her hometown of Cincinnati and takes a resident caretaker position at her local…