I wrote a couple of posts for the SCBWI Carolinas’ Blog and wanted to share them in one place: Emotional Resonance was the holy grail of my MFA experience. I captured a few thoughts in this post (it was *hard* to keep it to under 1000 words! so much to say about this topic!) If […]
Sixteen months ago, I started writing something that would change my story, but I didn’t know it at the time. The pandemic had already changed everything. My oldest college-aged kid was back home, my high schooler was at home, and so was I. This was not the plan. I needed something to distract me from […]
When we write, we send a story on a journey from our mind to the reader’s. In Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud defines mastery in comics as the percentage of the artist’s original ideas that survive the journey to the reader’s mind. [1] Although we write without pictures, novelists are still sending images, via the written […]
n There’s been talk lately about whether children’s books should tackle hard subjects. This one’s a no-brainer for me. They should. Kids read for truth and their world is not the cheery candy-colored confection adults strive so mightily to create. They should be given hope, yes. But hope without reality is about as satisfying as […]