Wednesday links

I love regularly reading tips and advice articles in certain subjects — particularly writing and publishing. I don’t always need the information right then, but I know that it’ll eventually come in handy. Or at least, I hope it will.

I know there are a lot of other people out there who feel the same way I do, but sometimes it can be difficult to find every useful advice article that’s out there. So I thought I’d bring you a few.

Here are the tips and advice articles that jumped out at me the most over the past week.

1. Stereoscopic Writing, from QueryTracker.net Blog: Sometimes, one of the hardest part of writing a story or novel is truly getting into the mind of your characters and seeing the world they way they would see it. But, regardless of how difficult you may find that to be, it’s important that you actually do it. Excerpt: “Because at some point, someone who thinks like your character (or used to think like your character or knows someone who thinks like your character) is going to read your book. And for them, it had better ring true or you’re going to lose a reader.”

2. Baby Got Back…Story, from The Other Side of the Story: A character’s backstory is a very important aspect of your novel – at least, it should be. However, you can’t just drop it in wherever you feel like it. Excerpt: “Backstory done right can add moving and meaningful layers to fiction. Backstory done poorly can weigh down your work with tedious and pointless information.”

3. 6 Keys to Revising Your Fiction, from Writer’s Digest: Writing a novel isn’t just about getting it down on paper. Once you’ve finished that step, you have to go back and revise, and it’s always nice to have a bit of help in that department. Excerpt: “Revising can become a sort of trap in which you start to judge the material so much that you never finish. It’s important to know when to move on so that you can get to the end and have a completed piece to revise.”