What Literary Agents Want But Aren't Getting
This week in the Writing Break cafe, we're digging into QueryTracker's live data to map the real supply and demand of the slush pile. Two genres are topping agents' wish lists while barely showing up ...
17 Sep 11min
Writing Multiple Points of View: Who Gets the Camera?
This week we kick things off with a publishing conundrum: a major publisher is now offering editors optional disclosure of AI use by writers after contracts are already signed. What's the point? We wa...
9 Sep 19min
Third-Person POV: Omniscient, Limited, and Which Is Best for Your Story
This week, we open the cafe with a toast to Dolly Parton and the 332-million-book literacy legacy she built with the Imagination Library.In publishing news: the Anthropic settlement disbursement timel...
2 Sep 18min
First-Person POV: Ditch the Cash Register Narration
When you choose a narrator, you're choosing whose personality the reader will inhabit for an entire book. Get it wrong, and you might find yourself rewriting 80,000 words. (I've seen it happen.)We're ...
27 Aug 10min
What Is "Narrator Voice"?: 5 Elements That Bring It to Life
Last week we established that voice is the narrator's personality. This week, we look at all five elements that make up voice and see if your narrator is a real person or just you in disguise.🛋️Overt...
13 Aug 12min
Voice vs. Style vs. Tone vs. Mood
Welcome to Season 10 of Writing Break! This season is all about voice, which is the thing literary agents, publishers, and readers fall in love with. In this premiere, we're setting up our makeshift O...
6 Aug 12min
New Literary Agent Rules to Know Before You Query
Season 10 is on hold because the rules for literary agents just changed, and not necessarily in the author's favor. This episode tells you exactly what questions to ask before you sign (or pay for) an...
30 Jul 12min
Goodbye to Genres: Parting Words for Writers (Clip Show #17)
We're closing the book on genre, two seasons, dozens of subgenres, and a lot of overthinking later. This week we revisit some highlights: novel architecture and the dreaded middle-of-the-book slump, w...
23 Jul 13min
