Beginnings

 

My novel Ursula's Inheritance was just short-listed for  Laramie Award
honoring Americana fiction.

My novel Missing At Harmony Festival was just short-listed for an MM Mystery Award.

                                                   find my BWL books here!

        Bring all your intelligence to bear on your beginning. --Elizabeth Bowen

January is a month for new beginnings. For writers, it may mean the start of a new novel. Here are some thoughts on beginnings...

Beginnings hold the promise of what's to come in the rest of the novel: the promise of being worth a reader's time and the engagement of her attention and imagination.

I advise my writing students to not worry too much about where a novel begins.  Find a point that interests you and plunge in. But after the first draft is complete, take another look at the beginning, and ask:

1. Does your beginning introduce the story, characters and establish a dramatic premise (what the major conflicts are)?

2. Does your beginning establish what kind of story this is (science fiction, mystery, romance, YA)?

3. Does it plant the reader firmly in time and place?

4. Does it contain conflict?

5. Does it set your tone and style?

6. Does it show your choice of viewpoint?

7. And always, always, always: is it essential?

Based on the answers to these questions, it may be wiser to start the book in another place, or perhaps work on that first chapter until it answers all seven questions, and of course...sings!

Remember dear writers: In literature as in life, no one gets a second chance to make a good first impression!

Writing for Young Readers

 

Find my books here

Remember the books you loved as a teen?  How they stayed with you like friends all your life? What were they? A beloved series?  A great classic? 

The first book I ever finished in one day was a Nancy Drew Mystery...The Secret at Shadow Ranch. Wow, too many cliff-hanging chapters to put down, even though it had cost me a month of weekly shopping trips for my Aunt Cece in order to buy!

Only a couple of things bothered me about intrepid Nancy and her sleuthing... one: there were never any characters who looked like me featured prominently in the stories and two: Nancy never aged! I was expecting her to get older, but there she was still fresh-faced and sixteen many many adventures later.  Now, I would add three: that she got conked on the head too many times (poor Nancy...amazing that her brain still worked so well!).

Inspired by my love of books like the Nancy Drew series, I have now written my own ... the Linda Tassel Mysteries, featuring a bridge person like myself and inspired by a friend from my Georgia days, Linda is a member of the Snowbird Cherokee people on her mother's side.  She teams up with Buffalo New York transplant Tad Gist to solve mysteries. They meet as high school students. They grow older together as their friendship deepens and turns to love.

It's a great privilege to write for young people... I love thinking that I may be contributing toward decisions to become lifelong readers. 

I hope you'll enjoy my series. The first, Death at Little Mound, just received a first place in the Murder and Mayhem Mystery Awards! The second, Missing at Harmony Festival was published last month.