Wednesday links: Endings, queries, and setting

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. Grand Finales: Tips for Writing Great Endings of Novels, from Live Write Thrive: I think there are few writers out there who would claim that writing a great ending is easy. At least, few writers that I know. But this post has some good tips. Excerpt: “A well-written book requires some kind of symphonic climax that resonates in our heads and hearts like the famous 40-second E-major chord at the end of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band. Our response may be filled with joy, hope, and happiness, or it may lead us to feel uncomfortable, to frown, scratch our heads, and worry about the unknown mysteries of life.”
2. Answering Questions about Queries, from Rachelle Gardner: I’ve shared links to articles about querying from agents before, but I wanted to add another one to the list. Here, Gardner answers a few questions from her readers. Excerpt: “If you are sending a query to an agent, only pitch projects that are ready to go. If it’s a novel and you are not previously published with a mainstream commercial publisher, this means a completed manuscript.”
3. Are You Making These Setting Mistakes?, from Writer’s Digest: Setting can be one of those difficult-to-balance elements. Too much, and you overwhelm your reader. Too little, and your reader doesn’t know where they are in space or time. Excerpt: “That secret key element? Setting. Setting can empower a story on so many levels, but until you realize exactly how to use setting effectively, it can create unnecessary stumbling blocks.”