Hello, writer, and welcome to The Novel Series, a multi-part blog post series about all things novels and other forms of fictional storytelling. I’ll be posting at least one, if not two, blogs from this series every month until it’s complete. This is Part I: How Long Should Your Manuscript Be? Click here to read…
Are you ever working on your latest writing project, and partway through the draft you can’t remember whether you gave that character blonde hair? Or what date something happened? Or what name you made up for a certain city the characters eventually have to get to? We’ve all been there! It’s easy to lose track…
Where do you start when creating a world for your sci-fi or fantasy novel? Worldbuilding is an essential component of speculative fiction, but it can seem daunting. Earlier this month, I attended YALLFest 2018 in Charleston, SC (read all about it). One of the panels, titled “Palaces from Paragraphs,” featured prominent YA authors discussing worldbuilding.…
I get a lot of questions about punctuating dialogue, and it’s something I’ve noticed writers struggling with lately. Punctuating dialogue can be tricky–when do you use a comma versus a period, and when do you capitalize things? What about question marks? In this post, I’ve highlighted the main questions I receive about punctuation and dialogue,…
This month’s blog post is devoted to worldbuilding basics. If you’ve poked around the site, or if you follow me on social media, you probably know my work focuses on science-fiction and fantasy novels. As a result, I spend my days immersed in other worlds and universes dreamt up by some amazing authors. Truth be…
Hi! It’s been a while since I posted on Between the Lines–life has been extraordinarily busy for me these last couple of months and I haven’t had time to blog. However, this new post is brought to you by JT Pledger, a novelist, screenwriter, and copywriter. We connected in the Between the Lines Writer’s Nook,…
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