Writer Unboxed

I’ll admit that, like many of my countrymen, I’m hooked on American Idol. How could I not be when the show has all the trappings to suck a viewer in: a few underdogs, beautiful people, loads of conflict (involving the judges, contestants, audience and the host), an ever-evolving saga with a guaranteed happy ending… Last […]

Agent Diedre Knight is the founder of the well-respected The Knight Agency. Recently, Knight broke out of the box, becoming an author herself! In fact, her first novel was published just this past week, on April 4th. Therese and Kathleen recently spoke with her about these changes and what she does to balance her parallel […]

Surfing the best of the writer’s blogs so you don’t have to.
In our quest to find good blogs on writing, we stumbled across prolific SF/F writer Crawford Kilian’s blog Writing Fiction. We’re also taken with another newish blog, Writing from the Trenches. They’re both good, check them out.
Over at Writer Beware, Victoria continues her series […]

I’m a big fan of Raymond Obstfeld and his book FICTON FIRST AID. Every writer should have this book in their craft library.
One of Obstfeld’s nuggets to milk tension out of a scene is a writerly sleight of hand he calls the suspense pocket. He writes, “[It’s] a little device that creates a misdirected suspense […]

Sunday’s entry in The Writer’s Almanac described the life of Parisian novelist Émile Zola. Born in 1840, Zola became one of the first fiction writers to incorporate realism into his work through extensive research—visiting sites he wrote about, conducting interviews, etc… Sometimes referred to as immersion research, this type of personal experience can add […]