Writer Unboxed

Last month, I blogged about getting to know your characters—which segways nicely into the WU theme for this month: voice. I’ve always felt that voice is the reflection of your POV characters’ personalities, the way they want their story to be told. And I’ve found that I can’t nail down the voice for my novels [...]

10 Comments »

Since Writer Unboxed is focusing on voice this month, I thought I’d add an unconventional riff to the awesome contributions already put forth. I love reading prose fiction — but in my heart of hearts, I’m a movie junkie. It’s a brilliant way to economically tell stories, and I enjoy the creative constraints the medium [...]

15 Comments »

Your voice already exists, right now, every time you sit down to write. It is inescapable—your voice is you. Voices can be obscured, even buried, under avalanches of helpful advice and nudges to be more literary or more commercial or less gritty or less sexual, but it cannot be entirely lost. I was once hiking [...]

23 Comments »

Today’s guest blogger is Becky Levine, author of The Writing & Critique Group Survival Guide: How to Give and Receive Feedback, Self-Edit, and Make Revisions, a new, comprehensive book about the critiquing experience published by Writer’s Digest Books. Becky’s with us today to tell us more about surviving critique — because, yeah, who hasn’t experienced–and [...]

30 Comments »

Uber-contributor Ray Rhamey just dropped us a line to let us know that he has launched his Buzz Blast contest to promote his new book The Vampire Kitty-cat Chronicles. Click the link for details. Prizes are: First Prize: to the largest number of emails/tweets sent, a choice of gear (t-shirt, mug, water bottle, etc.) from [...]

1 Comment »

Writerly news from around the Internetz: This is pretty cool. Stephen Elliott, author of The Adderall Diaries, chronicals what he calls “The DIY Book Tour” in the New York Times. His experience mirrored mine when I was a guest at a mother-daughter book club chat to talk about CONFESSIONS OF A FIRST DAUGHTER. The people who showed up for these events [...]

3 Comments »

I hate the term “slush pile.” It’s a concept that I find outdated. Unfortunately, last week’s article in the Wall Street Journal, “The Death of the Slush Pile,” did a fantastic job of continuing the mythic symbol of the slush pile in the most unhelpful way. First, to clarify, “slush” refers to any work that [...]

30 Comments »

We nearly forgot: Writer Unboxed is four years old today! Can’t wait to see what the next year brings. Until then, cake’s on us. Write on, all! Photo courtesy Flickr’s norwichnuts

12 Comments »

I am schizophrenic. That has to be the answer. Why do I say that? I recently came to understand that I write differently depending on the point-of-view character—and, scarily, I can’t write in that voice unless I channel the character. Here’s the inciting incident for this realization: I wanted to do an “About the author” [...]

15 Comments »

POV, otherwise known as the narrating voice of your novel, is one of the very first decisions a writer makes when starting a new work. And it’s probably the most important. Whether you are going to write in first person or third person (or very rarely, in second); and whether you are going to have [...]

15 Comments »

Who better to explain how important Voice is in story than someone who not only sees a mountain range of submissions on a regular basis but has the opportunity to receive feedback on those submissions from editors? I asked my fabulous agent, Elisabeth Weed, if she’d be willing to step in today, say hello to [...]

14 Comments »

I know a thing or two about writing in multiple voices. My day job as a feature writer and editor requires me to write in a standard journalistic voice. Before I was hired by Working Partners to write YA novels, I wrote historicals. The First Daughter series is heavy on contemporary teenage lingo, like, OMG yannow?. And now [...]

11 Comments »