Jeni Chappelle is a book editor and writing coach with 12+ years’ experience; EFA, ACES, and AWP member; cofounding editor of Revise & Resub (#RevPit); and podcast host. She considers herself a hobbit (minus the big, hairy feet) and lives in a tiny town in NC with her family and way too many pets.
It’s not an overstatement to say that backstory can make or break your book. Too much, and your readers may be bored to tears—too little, and they won’t know what’s…
Dialogue is a great tool to establish relationships between your characters and deepen emotional connection to your readers. But if you rely on dialogue alone to show how your characters…
Nanowrimo: A Perfectionist's Guide to Crappy First Drafts. Hi NanoWriMo-ers and non-NaNo-ers. I was all set to write a post this week about how it's okay to write a crappy first draft...
You read it again and again, repeating in your mind: I thought I was showing. This looks like showing to me! So, how do you get out of the show, don't tell trap? Read on.
Last weekend at the Suffolk Mystery Authors Festival, I spoke with several writers who have gotten stuck in the middle of their book--what I call the 'soggy middle.'
In 2022, we started asking for loglines as part of the submission process for the RevPit Annual Contest. Because this was new to the contest and a lot of the…
With the Twitter writing community scrambling to find a back-up home in case Twitter does indeed collapse, a lot of people in the publishing world have been trying out some…
The best way to show your character arc and agency is through reactions. Nine out of ten times when an author is getting "can't connect" feedbback, there's not enough character reaction on the page.
In the best stories, plot and character are so intricately linked that you couldn't pull one out without the whole thing unraveling. If you can, it's going to lead to "can't connect" or "didn't love it." This is called the plot - character connection.