writers digest award
 Writer's Digest 101 Best Websites
    for Writers (2005 - 2010)
 

 

writers digest magazine

Backspace featured in October 2009 Writer's Digest Magazine!  Read the online interview with co-founders Christopher Graham and Karen Dionne.

 

 Read EXTRA articles on writing and publishing on STET! - the Backspace blog

Follow Backspace on Twittertwitter logo

And join us on Facebook!


 

CONNECTICUT STORY DEVELOPMENT WORKSHOP 

Led by Richard Krevolin
Saturday, September 11th, 2010
(10am – 5pm) Woodbridge, Ct.
Backspace subscribers receive a $20 discount!
Click HERE for more information.

 

spacer.png, 0 kB
 
Thanks to everyone who helped make the 2010 Backspace Writers Conference and Agent-Author Seminar such an outstanding success!

 

editors panelRegistration is OPEN for the Backspace Agent-Author Seminar November 11 & 12, 2010

 

Early registration discounts until Sept. 15th

  SAVE $100!

Panel discussions with over 25 literary agents and small-group query letter and opening pages workshop critiques. Attendance limited to 150.



 

BUZZ YOUR BOOK Online Class

With International Bestselling Author M.J. ROSE

Course length: Six weeks

Limited to 25 people.

Course begins January 10th, 2011

Instructor: M.J. Rose

Click HERE for all the details!

Celestial Navigation by Marcus Sakey

 

starsWriting is a strange business, a dealing in constant abstraction, invention by sheer force of will. It's not always easy to see where you're going, or how to get there. So when you manage to discover a trick that makes the process simpler, it's like the stars broke free of the clouds.

This is a running list of techniques I use to navigate. I hope one of them might help if you're lost.

 

•  Spend at least as much time worrying about the characters as the plot. Get to know them. Figure out their conflict with one another. Plot and character evolve in tandem.

•  Know your villain as well as you know your hero. And remember that everyone is a hero in their own story. Make them act accordingly and they'll be a lot scarier.

Read more...
 
Writers, The End is Near: Four Ways to End a Short Story by Edward G. Talbot

 

"This is the end. My only friend, the end. Of our elaborate plans, the end"
- from "The End" by The Doors, 1967


the endIn my humble opinion, that song is one of the truly great rock songs. The mixture of pleasure and pain it describes applies to more than just lost love and killers and death. Sometimes when we writers are working on a story, finishing the story can be bittersweet, or even just plain bitter. And sometimes we get near the end and we have no idea how to finish it, especially with a short story. In this post, I've outlined four possible ways to effectively end a short story.

There are more ways to end a story other than these four of course. And there is often overlap between the different ways. But if you are stuck, a look at these may help unstick you. Even if you aren't stuck, they may give you some ideas. Anyway, here they are:

Read more...
 
Making the Average Joe Unaverage by Rebbie Macintyre
My experience with Backspace was exceptional, and even as a published author, I learned and re-learned so many writing principles. One of the highlights of the conference was a mini-workshop by the master teacher of fiction writing, Donald Maass.

The Fire in Fiction:  Passion, Purpose and Techniques to Make Your Novel GreatMaass talked about the opening of a novel, how it must be exceptionally crafted, maximizing the writer's skills. He started out by asking how many of us were writing about "average people caught in extraordinary circumstances." Quite a few hands went up, including my own. He explained that was one of the three types of protagonists. (The other two types are the heroic character and the dark character. I'll talk about Maass' insights for those characters in the following posts.)
Read more...
 
<< Start < Prev 1 2 3 4 Next > End >>

Results 9 - 12 of 16
© 2007 Backspace, LLC  Administrators: Christopher Graham; Karen Dionne  ( This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it