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. Tips on Upping The Stakes, from The Bookshelf Muse: If your novel is boring, you’re going to lose your readers. But, at the same time, it’s not good to have too much happening all at once. Excerpt: “The other word to define the process would be ‘escalation.’ Sounds like a change from failed diplomacy actions into hard military deployment, don’t you think?”

2. The View From Book Six, from Writer Unboxed: There are a lot of misconceptions floating around, among both writers and non-writers alike, about what life is like once you’ve published a novel. This article aims to enlighten its readers on a least a couple of them. Excerpt: “You’d think it gets easier to write a book after the first two or three have been published, wouldn’t you? Well, it doesn’t.”

3. Break It Up! How to Reduce Reader Fatigue, from QueryTracker Blog: Though you may not realize it, how the paragraphs in your novel look can play a role in whether or not a potential reader decides to pick it up. Why? Because giant blocks of text can be a bit daunting. “We have become a nation of short attention spans. If you hand us a tome filled with paragraphs that go on for pages, we will snore. Our eyes will glaze over.”

4. Overcome The Limitations Of First Person POV: 5 Ways, from Write to Done: Writing in first person point of view can really help readers to understand your protagonist. But it can also limit how much readers learn about your other characters. Luckily, there are ways to work around that limitation. Excerpt: “It sounds like a paradox. How can Jim, a normal human being, know what’s happening in Ellie’s kitchen three miles away, without clairvoyance or technology? And how can he know what she’s thinking at that moment, unless he is telepathic?”

And a bonus: Read two books and call me in the morning, from CBC Books: I’ve always found that fiction helps me get through life; it’s good to know that others feel the same way. Excerpt: “Berthoud described bibliotherapy as ‘the art of prescribing fiction in order to cure life’s ailments. … I help them through life’s hurdles and ups and downs by prescribing them great novels.’ “