Books

When in doubt, make sure the character names are reasonable for the era, based on popularity of the birth year. The SSA provides listings by year, here: http://www.ssa.gov/cgi-bin/popularnames.cgi Very, very handy.

My brain really wrapped around the idea of a Beat Sheet when I read “Nail Your Novel”. It was an expansion of what I learned from Chris Soth’s mentorship and his Mini-Movie Method. I’ve blathered before about Truby’s Anatomy of Story, and it’s the combination of his Scene Weave exercise with the Beat Sheet that … Read more

The highly regarded and award-winning novelist, E.L. Doctorow, whose books were on our shelves while I was growing up, spoke the other day at Michigan State University, and raised some interesting points about what “is” historical fiction. His point is that all fiction is historical–except the genre writing of that name which seems to be … Read more