Dorothy A. Winsor

Back in the days before the pandemic, I was lucky enough to be invited to speak to ninety sixth graders about writing. They’d been writing themselves, and the room in which we met had wonderful samples of their work posted on the walls. I wound up leading them through an exercise on how to turn an idea into a plot. I started with the idea I had for my only middle grade book Finders Keepers. The idea came to me…

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I find that people outside the world of Young Adult fiction often don’t understand what YA is. I have neighbors without children around or older book club members who lump it in with the whole children’s market. They see it and chapter books as being in the same category. Even people in children’s fiction sometimes have trouble. I once read opening pages a loud at a meeting of the Society for Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, and someone suggested that…

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If you’re thinking of using multiple points of view in a novel, here are three things to consider that might help you decide. Do You Need Multiple Points of View? First, ask yourself if you really need more than one character telling this story. Everything in a story should have a reason for being there. That includes the number of point of view characters. Maybe you need more than one because no single character is going to know everything needed…

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In Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook, literary agent Donald Maass offers advice on the importance of the first and last lines of a book. That first line is what draws the reader in, often while browsing in a bookstore. The last line helps shape a reader’s final impression of a book and perhaps leads them to seek out more work by the same author. According to Maass, first lines should do one of three things to create the desire to…

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