Mystery Mondays: Laurel S. Peterson on The Tension Of Believing

June 27, 2016June 10, 2016 ~ Kristina Stanley ~ 13 Comments

To kick of the 206-2017 season of Mystery Mondays, we have Laurel S. Peterson joining us today. We’re celebrating her new release, SHADOW NOTES, published by Barking Rain Press, and she’s going tell us about…

THE TENSION OF BELIEVING—AND NOT

by Laurel S. Peterson

Thanks for having me on your blog, Kristina. I’m honored to be here.

Part of the core of my novel Shadow Notes is my own wrestling over the validity of intuitive or “psychic” powers. I have friends who tell me they “know” things, that they are connected with aspects of experience that are unseen by most people. I have had moments in my life where I also have had experiences like this. One vivid moment was when I was a teenager, sitting on a park bench somewhere in Europe waiting for my parents. I had a sudden flash where I understood that I could have been, could be, any of the people walking by me. We were all the same, while at the same time we had ended up in different bodies. It was a moment of profound oneness with all that was around me.

Another time, I was waiting for a response from a literary agent. Two days before I got the letter, I became absolutely certain that she had rejected me. (Of course, we all carry some of this around, I imagine!) It was the kind of certainty I’ve experienced on one or two other occasions, one of which was an acceptance. Where did that certainty come from? Where did that awareness of one-ness come from? I don’t have an explanation for it, and the rational, scientific skeptic in me says those kinds of moments are explainable if I understood brains better—or if I would just allow myself to believe. Believing isn’t something I’m so good at.

My protagonist, Clara Montague, has dreams and gets visions of things through touching. In one instance, she foresees a character’s death when she grabs that person’s hand; in her dreams, she sees a wave of blood falling toward her and her mother. The dreams repeat and intensify until Clara can figure out what’s causing them.

Because I’m not sure how I feel about this, or because I don’t know how to resolve the tension between my friends’ assertions about their very real experiences and my own secret belief that there is no such thing (not so secret anymore!), the only place for me to tackle it is in my fiction. I love my friends. I believe them. I worry about them. I don’t see my way clear to one point of view or the other; I have to hold both in tension within me all the time. Clara herself maintains this kind of tension; she doesn’t want her gift. She believes her mother has the same gift, but Constance refuses to discuss it with her. She doesn’t want to act on her gift, but if she doesn’t, she is physically and psychologically damaged by her attempts to suppress it. Early in the book, we learn she spent some time in a Swiss psychiatric hospital.

I think one of the hardest things we do as human beings is to learn to accept that there are things we can’t resolve, that opposite things can both be true at the same time. The simple example I give my students is that we can love and hate the same person at the same time. The fun part, the part that makes us interesting, is that complexity. Accepting it isn’t easy, but it’s much more interesting than if it weren’t there at all.

What do you think about intuition? Do psychic phenomena exist? Is this something you’ve experienced? What kinds of opposites you find hard to resolve? Thanks for reading, and I look forward to hearing your comments.

WHO IS Laurel S. Peterson?

Laurel S. Peterson is an English professor at Norwalk Community College. Her mystery novel, Shadow Notes, was just released by Barking Rain Press. She has published two poetry chapbooks, That’s the Way the Music Sounds, (Finishing Line Press, 2009) and Talking to the Mirror (Last Automat Press, 2010); a full length collection, “Do You Expect Your Art to Answer You?” will be released by Futurecycle Press in 2017. In 2016 – 2017, she is serving as the town of Norwalk’s Poet Laureate. She also co-edited a collection of essays on women’s justice titled (Re)Interpretations: The Shapes of Justice in Women’s Experience (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009). You can find her at www.laurelpeterson.com, on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/LaurelPetersonWriter/, and on Twitter: @laurelwriter49.

Shadow Notes Cover compressed SHADOW NOTES: Clara Montague didn’t even want to come home. Her mother, Constance Montague, never liked her—or listened to her—but now they have to get along or they will both end up in jail or dead.

Clara always suspected she and Constance share intuitive powers, but Constance always denied it. When Clara is twenty, she dreams her beloved father dies of a heart attack, and Constance claims she is being hysterical. Then he dies.

Furious and betrayed, Clara leaves for fifteen years to tour the world, but when she dreams Constance is in danger, she can’t ignore it, no matter how she feels. Shortly after Clara returns home, Constance’s therapist Hugh Woodward is murdered and Constance is jailed for the crime.

Since her mother refuses to tell her anything, Clara enlists the aid of brother and sister Andrew and Mary Ellen Winters, Constance’s enemies, to dig out Constance’s secrets. First, however, she must determine whether the Winters, wealthy socialites with political ambitions, are lying and what their motivations are for helping her. In addition, why does the mere fifteen year age difference between Clara and her mother make them nervous?

Starting to explore Constance’s past, Clara discovers a closet full of books on trauma and gets a midnight visit from a hooded intruder wielding a knife, who tries to scare her off her investigation. But her dreams become more demanding and there’s a second murder. Realizing she can’t run back to Paris as she wishes, she works with the town’s sexy new police chief to find the truth about Hugh’s murder and its connection to her mother’s past. Only in finding the connection will she be able to figure out how those secrets have shaped both Constance’s life and her own. Only in finding the connection will they finally be able to heal their relationship.

Write Better Fiction: POV and Writing A Series

June 8, 2016 ~ Kristina Stanley ~ 6 Comments

I’ve been thinking a lot about writing a series, and what an author must consider when it comes to point of view.

AVALANCHE is the third book in the Stone Mountain Mystery Series and is to be released June 25^th, 2016. When I first started writing the series, I thought I was writing a standalone novel. Of course my characters took over, and now I have a series.

Early on, I decided to write in close third person from multiple points of view. Little did I know, that once I made that decision, I would have to stick to that for the rest of the series.

Here are some questions to ask yourself when you begin your novel. And when you ask these questions of yourself, don’t assume you’ll be writing a standalone novel. You just never know.

Do you plan to switch POVs?

If you’re going to have multiple POVs in your novel, it’s important to let your reader know this early on in the story.

It could be jarring for a reader to get half way through a novel, and the POV is ripped from underneath their feet and a new character steps in.

Changing POVs in the first few chapters will warn the reader this is your style and hopefully they’ll enjoy your book more. They’ll expect different characters to have their say, to drive the novel, and to provide surprises. They won’t get so attached to one POV that they can’t bear the change and toss the novel aside.

What POV type will you choose?

Can you be consistent for an entire novel or several novels?

If you chose first person, do you stay in first person? Do you reference anything first person can’t possibly know?
For Third person, are you writing third person, third person limited or omniscient? If limited, so you reference things character can’t know about? In limited reader can’t see into characters mind.

For the second book in your series, follow the same POV pattern. The reader will expect a similar style and voice in the second and following books.

BOOKS I’ve read on POV:

The Power of Point of View by Alicia Rasley

Characters and Viewpoint by Orson Scott Card

Characters, Emotions and Viewpoint by Nancy Kress

A Little About AVALANCHE (To Be Released June 25^th, 2016):

On a cold winter morning, the safe at Stone Mountain Resort is robbed, and Kalin Thompson’s brother, Roy, suspiciously disappears. As Director of Security, Kalin would normally lead the investigation, but when her brother becomes the prime suspect, she is ordered to stay clear.

The police and the president of the resort turn their sights on Kalin, who risks everything to covertly attempt to clear Roy’s name. As threats against her escalate, she moves closer to uncovering the guilty party. Is Kalin’s faith in her brother justified? Or will the truth destroy her?

A Gift to My Readers from Imajin Books:

Imajin Books has put AVALANCHE on sale for $0.99 USD for a limited time. Grab your copy before the price goes up. It’s available for pre-order now.
Thanks for reading…

Thanks for Reading…

Kristina Stanley

Write Better Fiction: Do Scenes Per Chapter Matter?

May 25, 2016May 23, 2016 ~ Kristina Stanley ~ 4 Comments

Today on Write Better Fiction we’ll cover Scenes Per Chapter. Write Better Fiction is a process to help you critique your own manuscript and give yourself feedback. This will help you improve your novel, so you’re ready to submit it to an editor.

Last week we talked about the number of words in a scene. Today, I’m going to share how I look at the number of scenes in a chapter.

A scene or several scenes will make up a chapter. The Scenes Per Chapter report will illustrate the structure of your novel based on scenes in each chapter.

An author has two choices. Every chapter can have the same number of scenes, or the number of scenes per chapter varies throughout the novel.

A similar number of scenes per chapter: An author may choose to write chapters composed of exactly the same number of scenes or a similar number of scenes. They create a novel in this format, then they acquire readers, and the readers come to expect the structure throughout the novel. It might be risky for the author to change once they have established a following for their style.

Variable Number of Scenes Per Chapter: You must at least have one scene per chapter. It may only be one word or one sentence but it still counts as a scene. The upper limit is endless.

Potential pitfalls with the number of scenes per chapter:

One chapter with a greater number of scenes than the others: When the reader gets to this scene, he is going to wonder why so much time has been allocated to the scene. Either the author didn’t notice one scene was way too long, or he did on purpose because something very important is happening in the scene.

Switching Structure Mid-Novel: Even if the reader doesn’t register the number of scenes per chapter consciously, they may be jarred out of reading if the first half of the novel is written with the same number of scenes per chapter, and then the number changes. If you choose to have the same number of scenes per chapter, then remain consistent throughout the novel.

You won’t be surprised that I use my spreadsheet to count scenes per chapter and I look for anything that stands out as unusual. I ask myself why I wrote the chapter this way. Below is an example.

Screen Shot 2016-05-17 at 5.06.19 PM

In the above graph, you can see that chapter 3 is very different from the other chapters in the novel. In this case, I would consider breaking chapter 3 into two or more chapters.

The first and last chapters are very few scenes. The first chapter has only one scene. I did this because I want the reader engaged quickly and this helps keep the pace fast. I sometimes end a novel with only one scene in the final chapter. This is the chapter that comes after the climax, so I want to close things up but I don’t want the story to drag on.

As with word count per scene, this type of analysis is done when an author has finished the first draft. It’s a bird’s eye view of the structure and allows me to check the pacing and flow of my story.

I critiqued DESCENT, BLAZE and AVALANCHE using the techniques I’m sharing in Write Better Fiction, and I believe this helped me sign with a publisher.

Please let me know in the comments below if you examine your scenes per chapter and why you do this?

Thanks for reading…

Write Better Fiction: Scene Word Count

May 18, 2016May 15, 2016 ~ Kristina Stanley ~ 6 Comments

Today on Write Better Fiction we’ll cover Scene Word Count. Write Better Fiction is a process to help you critique your own manuscript and give yourself feedback. This will help you improve your novel, so you’re ready to submit it to an editor.

When writing genre fiction you should know the length of the novel that is acceptable for your genre, but what about words per scene?

Do you think word count per scene is important?

I do, and here’s why.

Word count per scene is the number of words in a scene. A scene or several scenes will make up a chapter, the chapters get you to the novel. I know, obvious, right? But how can you analyze your word count to improve your novel?

Same number of words per scene: An author may choose to write scenes that are all a similar length. Let’s say 1800 to 2200. They create a novel in this format, then they acquire readers, and the readers come to expect the flow a similar word count per scene would generate. It might be risky for the author to change once she has established a following for her style.

Variable Number of Words Per Scene: In theory, you could have a scene as short at one work and as long as the entire novel. These are extremes of course.

Potential pitfalls with word count:

One long scene: You write a novel with scenes that range from one paragraph in length to 1200 words, but you have one scene that is 2500 words. When the reader gets to this scene, he is going to wonder why so much time has been allocated to the scene. Either the author didn’t notice one scene was way too long, or he did on purpose because something very important is happening in the scene.

My spreadsheet has a column for scene word count. I then have Excel graph the scene lengths. I have a quick look for anything that stands out as unusual and ask myself why I wrote the scene this way. This graph would extend to the number of chapters in the novel.

Screen Shot 2016-05-15 at 5.53.30 PM

What Stands Out?

Chap 2: The first scene in only 50 words long. This is very short compared to the other scenes in the novel.

Is it too short compared to the rest of the scenes? In this case, am I trying to create an effect of shock, or fast pace, or intrigue?

Chap 3: This chapter only has two scenes where every other chapter in the novel has three scenes.

Was this done on purpose? Was it a mistake? Ask yourself what you’re trying to achieve by the number of scenes in a chapter. You could also create this graph on a per chapter basis and ask yourself the same questions as per on a chapter basis.

Chap 4: This scene is 2500 words long. The graph shows you it’s out of balance with the other scenes in the novel.

Is a scene too long compared to others? In this case, I must ask what is so special about this scene. If nothing, then I’ll consider breaking the scene into two or more scenes.

This type of analysis is done when an author has finished her first draft. It’s a bird’s eye view of the structure and allows her to check the pacing and flow of her story.

I critiqued DESCENT, BLAZE and AVALANCHE using the techniques I’m sharing in Write Better Fiction, and I believe this helped me sign with a publisher. And speaking of publishers, Imajin Books has released AVALANCHE for pre-order at $0.99 USD for a limited time. This way, my readers get a little gift of a sale price before the novel is released.

Please let me know in the comments below if you examine your word count by scene and why you do this?

Thanks for reading…

Write Better Fiction: Point Of View

May 11, 2016May 4, 2016 ~ Kristina Stanley ~ 11 Comments

Today on Write Better Fiction we’ll cover Point Of View. Write Better Fiction is a process to help you critique your own manuscript and give yourself feedback. This will help you improve your novel, so you’re ready to submit it to an editor.

What is Point of View?

I use the Point Of View (POV) in many of my spreadsheet columns and have been asked to describe what POV is.

POV is the perspective the story is told from. There are three main types of POV.

Omniscient
First Person
Third Person

There is also second person, but this doesn’t seem to be used much in commercial fiction, so I won’t spend any time on it.

OMNISCIENT is when the narrator of the story knows all. The narrator can get into the head of any character to drive the story forward.

An excellent of a novel written in omniscient POV is the Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. One way to determine this is to notice that the narrator provides information that the characters are unaware of.

FIRST PERSON means the narrator is speaking directly to the reader. This comes in the form of ‘I’.

Janet Evanovich writes the Stephanie Plum novels in first person. Often, near the beginning, she’ll write something like: My name is Stephanie Plum. I work as a bond enforcer…

THIRD PERSON is written from the he said / she said narration.

Of course, I have to mention my novels for third person point of view narration. I wrote DESCENT, BLAZE, and AVALANCHE in third person. I like to change points of view and get into the heads of more than one character, so this style suits me.

My favorite book on point of view is The Power Of Point Of View: Make Your Story Come To Life by Alicia Rasley. If you want an in-depth description of all the points of view and their variations, this is a great book to read.

Please let me know in the comments below if you have any thoughts on POV. What form do you write in and why?

Thanks for reading…

Write Better Fiction: Avoid Repetitive Scene Openings

May 4, 2016May 2, 2016 ~ Kristina Stanley ~ 2 Comments

Today on Write Better Fiction we’ll cover Scene Entry Types. Write Better Fiction is a process to help you critique your own manuscript and give yourself feedback. This will help you improve your novel, so you’re ready to submit it to an editor.

Over the last few weeks, we covered scene entry, scene middle, and exit hooks. I’d like to back up a bit and look at scene entries again.

My husband was my first beta reader, and he read the first draft of the first novel I wrote. As it turns out, that novel is AVALANCHE, to be published this spring by Imajin Books.

His first comment to me, and I was a little crushed, was:

“Do you know you start every scene with a character in a doorway?”

I was expecting, “I love this book,” not actual critique. Well, I’ve since toughened up and have realized critique is much more helpful than unwarranted praise if you’re trying to write better. His comment drove me to figure out how to vary scene openings.

As you know, I use a spreadsheet to self-edit my novels.

I have a column called entry type. The choices are:

Dialogue
Thought
Narrative
Action

If you have other categories, please let me know in the comments below.

Once I’ve filled out my spreadsheet, I create a pie chart to see if my novel is balanced.

Screen Shot 2016-05-02 at 10.00.51 AM

Then I create a graph, to check if I’ve start the scenes in a variety of ways and didn’t get stuck in a pattern.

Screen Shot 2016-05-02 at 2.11.27 PM

D is dialogue

A is action

T is thought

N is narrative.

The idea is to ensure I haven’t started too many scenes in a row in the same way. If I have, I go back and revise the scenes, looking for a different way to write the opening. I don’t want to bore a reader by getting into a pattern.

I critiqued DESCENT, BLAZE and AVALANCHE using the techniques I’m sharing in Write Better Fiction, and I believe this helped me sign with a publisher.

Please let me know in the comments below if you have any suggestions how to check for repetitive scene entries?

Thanks for reading…

Write Better Fiction: Scene Exit Hook

April 27, 2016April 26, 2016 ~ Kristina Stanley ~ 2 Comments

Today on Write Better Fiction we’ll cover The Exit Hook. Write Better Fiction is a process to help you critique your own manuscript and give yourself feedback. This will help you improve your novel, so you’re ready to submit it to an editor.

Everyone knows the cliche hook, line, and sinker. You can apply that to your scene but think of it as entry hook, scene middle, and exit hook. You’ll need all three of these elements in every scene to create a story your readers can’t put down.

The Exit Hook:

An exit hook is the thing that will keep your reader wanting to start the next scene.

You can ask yourself: Why would the reader keep reading once they reach the end of a scene?

Hook, LINE, Sinker Types of Exit Hooks:

Cliff Hanger – perhaps your protagonist’s life is at risk.
Revelation – show the reader something that will change the course of the story.
Set back for protagonist or antagonist – one of these characters should be very unhappy about the latest event.
A secret revealed – you can either reveal a full secret or only part of a secret.
A question left hanging – this will tease the reader, making them want the answer.
An unexpected plot twist – this will keep the reader guessing.

Like scene entry hooks, varying the types listed above will make the novel more interesting for your reader.

You don’t want the reader to get to the end of a scene and be bored. You want them to resist going to bed, or making dinner, or going for a walk, and instead, keep reading.

Your challenge this week: Go through your manuscript and list the type of endings you have for each scene. Do you vary them? Have you used all the types? If you have other types, please list them in the comments below and help other readers learn from your experience.

I critiqued DESCENT and BLAZE using the techniques I’m sharing in Write Better Fiction, and I believe this helped me sign with a publisher.

Please let me know in the comments below if you have any suggestions how to check whether a scene middle is strong enough?

AGTSBNB And just for something different. I’m happy announce that THE AUTHOR’S GUIDE TO SELLING BOOK TO NON-BOOKSTORES is now available for pre-order on Kobo and Google Play The release date is May 28th, 2016.

Thanks for reading…

Write Better Fiction: The Scene Middle

April 20, 2016April 19, 2016 ~ Kristina Stanley ~ Leave a comment

Today on Write Better Fiction we’ll cover The Scene Middle. Write Better Fiction is a process to help you critique your own manuscript and give yourself feedback. This will help you improve your novel, so you’re ready to submit it to an editor.

Everyone knows the cliche hook, line, and sinker. You can apply that to your scene but think of it as entry hook, scene middle, and exit hook. You’ll need all three of these elements in every scene to create a story your readers can’t put down.

The Dreaded Scene Middle (hook, line, sinker)

You’ve got a great scene hook. Your readers are engaged. So don’t let them down when it comes to the middle of your scene. You want to reel them in all the way to the climax of the scene.

You must have conflict. This doesn’t mean a fight, but there should be something standing in the way of the goal of your point of view character for that scene. The conflict will cause the characters in the scene to react. This may be good or bad for your protagonist, but it must move your story forward.

Make sure there is action. Something must happen in the middle of your scene. I try to describe the action in one short sentence. That way when I scan the column in my spreadsheet and can check I have a tight middle.

This column will structure your thoughts so it’s easy to ask yourself:

Are you repeating anything?

Does your middle link the scene hook to the climax?

Does everything in the middle either relate to the POV character goal, drive the story forward or develop character? If not, consider removing that part, or at the least, understand why you included it in your scene middle.

Screen Shot 2015-11-30 at 5.06.20 PM

Your challenge this week: In one sentence describe what happens in the middle of each scene. Is it enough to keep the reader reading?

I critiqued DESCENT and BLAZE using the techniques I’m sharing in Write Better Fiction, and I believe this helped me sign with a publisher. And speaking of my publisher, Imajib Books is having a sale this week.

Shower yourself with ebooks from Imajin Books during the Spring Showers eBook Sale April 17 – 23.

The sale includes DESCENT and BLAZE, so if you haven’t read either Stone Mountain Mystery, now is your chance.

Please let me know in the comments below if you have any suggestions how to check whether a scene middle is strong enough?

Thanks for reading…

Write Better Fiction: When A POV Doesn’t Reach A Goal

March 23, 2016March 22, 2016 ~ Kristina Stanley ~ 8 Comments

Today on Write Better Fiction we’ll cover What happens if the POV doesn’t achieve her scene goal. Write Better Fiction is a process to help you critique your own manuscript and give yourself feedback. This will help you improve your novel, so you’re ready to submit it to an editor.

If you’ve been reading this series, you know I’m describing a spreadsheet I created to evaluate each scene of a novel. I use this spreadsheet after a solid draft to evaluate each scene and revise it as needed.

This week I’ll over POV goal failure.

To shorten the heading in the spreadsheet, I’ve called the column “Outcome if POV Fails.” I know this means what happens if POV doesn’t achieve his goal.

This question is sometimes hard to answer. If the question is hard to answer, the goal may not relate to the overall plot. If nothing happens because the character fails to achieve the goal, then what’s the point of the goal.

The answer doesn’t have to be earth shattering.

In DESCENT, Kalin’s internal goal is to be good at her job. If she fails, she might get fired, be reprimanded or lose her confidence at work.

In the opening scene, her external goal is to go skiing. This has a more subtle relationship to the plot. The goal is there to show Kalin is adventurous and athletic. When Ben tells he she can’t go skiing because the conditions are too dangerous, her trait of not listening to others is revealed. This goal is about character development.

For an obvious example, say a character’s scene goal is to reveal to the police she’s discovered fraud at work. She fails to reach the police in time, and she becomes a suspect in the fraud. You can easily tell what happens when she fails to reach her goal.

The answer strength should vary throughout the novel. The will help with pacing and keep the reader engaged.

If every scene has an obvious goal and and obvious failure, the reader will get bored with the repetition.

Sometime the character will achieve their goal. This is okay too. The idea is to create tension in the scene with the possibility the character might fail. They don’t have to fail, for the tension to be effective.

Your challenge this week is to use the columns for internal and external character goal that you set in POV GOAL AND PLOT and ask yourself what happens if the character doesn’t achieve that goal.

I critiqued DESCENT and BLAZE using the techniques I’m sharing in Write Better Fiction, and I believe this helped me sign with a publisher.

Please me know in the comments below if you found this exercise challenging. Did it help you write a tenser scene?

Thanks for reading…

Descent & Blaze

Write Better Fiction: Point of View Goal and Plot

March 16, 2016March 15, 2016 ~ Kristina Stanley ~ 4 Comments

Today on Write Better Fiction we’ll cover How the Point of View Scene Goal Relates to Overall Plot. Write Better Fiction is a process to help you critique your own manuscript and give yourself feedback. This will help you improve your novel, so you’re ready to submit it to an editor. Check the bottom of this post for links to previous Write Better Fiction articles.

The column in the spreadsheet has long title, and if you can think of a better one let me know.

This is column where I analyze both the internal and external goal of the point of view character.

Each scene has a point of view character. This character must have a goal for the scene. If there is no goal, then what is the character doing?

Let’s deal with the external goal first. This is the goal the reader is aware of.

Finding a murderer is Kalin’s main goal throughout DESCENT. She also has goals within each scene where she holds the point of view. In the opening scene her external goal is to go skiing. Her internal goal is to be good at her job.

The reader is shown Kalin wants to go skiing. She doesn’t achieve this goal because a skier falls and is terribly hurt. She has to put her own wants aside and deal with the situation. This is the start of Kalin’s journey of searching for a murderer. At the time she doesn’t know she is witness to a crime, she’s only thinking of taking care of the skier. The external goal of skiing places her on the hill at the time the skier falls.

Kalin’s internal goal is to be good at her job. In the opening scene, she doesn’t know yet this will involve chasing a murderer.

For each scene, think about how the POV character’s goal is related to the plot of the novel. If you don’t know the answer, perhaps the scene isn’t relevant to the story, or perhaps another character should have the POV for that scene.

Your scene may just need some updating. Can you strengthen the character’s goal? Is there a way to add a goal to the scene so it relates to the novel’s plot?

You can also use this column to check for consistency. Let’s say your character is a tea drinker, and you put the character’s scene goal as finding a cup of coffee. That should trigger you’ve made a mistake.

When you’ve finished the spreadsheet for each scene, you should be able to scan this column and find any entries that are weak.

Your challenge this week is to check the previous column for internal and external character goal and determine if that goal relates to the overall plot.

I critiqued DESCENT and BLAZE using the techniques I’m sharing in Write Better Fiction, and I believe this helped me sign with a publisher.

Descent & Blaze