Jane Friedman

What to Ask Your Beta Readers

Giving your beta readers structure makes it easier for them, and helps ensure th...

How Symbols Can Support Your Writing Life

Life speaks to us through symbols that help us learn, grow, heal, and create, if...

The Double-Edged Sword of List Building Promotions

Third-party promoters who offer to pad your email subscriber list for a fee migh...

5 Reasons You Should Consider Writing Your Memoir in Pr...

Present tense is tough to execute and doesn’t suit every writer or every memoir,...

How to Write Compelling Inner Conflict

When we show our character’s cognitive dissonance—wrestling with conflicting bel...

Is Your Story “Big Enough” to Write About?

We all have limiting beliefs that essentially all say the same thing: you are no...

Defining Negative Space in Story

When you manipulate spaces in between with intention, your readers will stay int...

Your Small Press Submission Checklist

If you’ve decided to seek a press that accepts unagented work, here’s a checklis...

A Writer’s Secret Weapon: Add a Listening Pass to Your ...

Using a phone’s text-to-speech feature to read your story aloud while doing chor...

Embrace Complication to Develop a Can’t-Put-It-Down Nar...

Even if your plot is moving along nicely, a well-placed complication can jolt th...

3 Book Marketing Misconceptions and What to Do Instead

Shifting your understanding and approach to book marketing can transform it from...

How to Deliver Backstory Without Confusing the Reader

A brief but super-powered lesson from one of our recent webinars about the how t...

How Do You Know What Backstory to Include?

Backstory risks feeling clumsy or intrusive if it’s not directly relevant to the...

Why Your Flashbacks Aren’t Working

Like a genie in a bottle, flashbacks can be wonderful and terrible things. If no...

Boundaries Are About More Than Simply Carving Out the T...

Boundaries within ourselves—our limits, standards, knowing which interactions ar...

How and Where to Build Your Literary Community

Put your energy into people and places that are a good fit for you and your writ...

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