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Flash Fiction
You are on your last errand of the day. You should have been home, already. You are inside a store or business or bank or gas station.. You name the place. People in hazmat suits suddenly rush the place. They have secured all the exits. You are all being quarantined for an unknowable amount of…
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A Little Snip Here
When I wrote articles and submitted them and the stars aligned, a magazine editor would accept on the condition that I cut it back by 200 words or 35 or some percentage. I understood that they built a magazine on paper, an unyielding rectangle of writerly real estate. It think being asked to cut words…
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Editing and the Creative Process
The primary focus will be how we edit. • Do you like to edit as you go or just try to get the first draft out there before going back? • Do you use an outline? • Does your editing get in the way of words magically flowing onto the page? Let’s talk about things…
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Mood
Some books, Wuthering Heights, for example have a dark mood set on the first page. In The Accidental Tourest, the sadness, loss and dysfunction are obvious in the first scene. Mood, is it a single thing or is it a word stew of various aspects of story? Setting may be a quick way to establish…
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The Heart of Romance
What Makes a Romance Novel a Romance Novel? What is really at the ‘Heart of Romance?’ Join us as we honor Valentine’s Day. Novels of this type of genre fiction place their primary focus on the relationship and romantic love between two people, and must have an “emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending.” … A thriving genre of…