Writer's Relief Blog: "Cover Letters And Query Letters; A Checklist For Writers"
At Writer’s Relief, we have spent many years learning what literary agents and editors are really looking for in the submission process, and we’re happy to share our expertise with you. The following cover and query letter checklist will help you master the basics and get your writing published!
If you haven’t already read our cover and query letter basics post to learn the difference between a cover letter and a query letter, please feel free to do so!
Source: writersrelief
Writing tips
Want to know the first things we look for in our writers? Check it out.
“Before I write down one word, I have to have the character in my mind through and through. I must penetrate into the last wrinkle of his soul.”
~HENRIK IBSEN
This was emailed to me yesterday, an awesome visualization of archetypes in the alignment system — a way of plotting characters on a good vs. evil, law vs. chaos matrix. I think archetypes are really helpful in creating characters, but just a small, small string in their fabric. The story should shape the characters into three dimensions (not just one-dimensional, quintessential archetypes) and the characters should shape the story. Rarely can the two co-exist apart.
Source: justinmclachlan
Justin McLachlan tells us how long it took him to write the first draft of Time Up, and how long it took to edit.
Source: youtu.be
He shouted, excitingly! 5 Tips on Dialogue
In a lot of stories sent to us, characters bellow or whisper or grouse or scream or shout their dialogue. Usually, “said” is the only attribution you need. Jack said. Tracy said. Liz said. It’s plain, it’s simple and it makes for easy reading.
In Thanks, But This Isn’t For Us, Jessica Page Morrell says:
“Good dialogue doesn’t rely on speech tags (she said warily, he spoke warily, Bob ventured sullenly) to express emotions or describe what is being said.”
So how do you get the emotion in the scene, the personality of the character and the tone of their voice across without resorting to speech tags or a ton of adverbs? Here are some ideas:
- Know your characters. Their dialogue will nearly write itself if you understand and trust them enough to know exactly what they would say in the situations you find them in. If the dialogue doesn’t float to the top, maybe your characters shouldn’t be speaking. Or maybe you don’t yet know them.
- Be indirect. Characters don’t always need to respond to each other, they don’t always have to say exactly what’s on their mind and they should never repeat what the other characters in the scene already know.
- Be selective. We fill our real-life conversations with a lot of placeholders and fillers. Oh. Uhm. Ah. Right. Okay. Yeah. But dialogue in fiction should be fast, snappy and concise. It’s one of the best ways to move the story and pull readers into the scene. Cut out the filler. Boil your dialogue down to its essence. Give us the good parts, and only the good parts.
- Tension, tension, tension. If you’re looking for a way to fire up the emotion in your dialogue, then you need to create tension. Two characters talking in agreement is boring; two characters arguing or trying to win a verbal spar is interesting. This works especially well when you’ve got a lot of information to convey. As one character explains, have another doubt what he’s hearing. It’ll create tension and make us interested to see the reconciliation.
- $*!@%#(*&. If a character is the type who swears like a sailor, then, the character should swears like a sailor but — don’t rely on profanity to add impact or punch to your dialogue. Here and there, every once in a while, will do far more than having every other word out of a character’s mouth be something you couldn’t say on television. (And as a bonus, while we’re on the subject of artificially pumping up dialogue, the same goes for excessive exclamation marks! All the ! won’t turn flat dialogue into something exciting.). Think, sparingly.
