She Writes

A note from Kamy...

If you are based in New York City, and want to change your life, and somebody else's, please, consider becoming a mentor for Girls Write Now.  Applications are due May 15th.  If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me.  From what I've heard, the secret of Girls Write Now is that the mentors get as much out of it -- as writers, as women, as human beings -- as the girls do.…

I just finished reading a novel in which the author used a lot of exclamation marks in her dialogue. In fact, she employed them so often that I FELT LIKE THE CHARACTERS WERE SHOUTING AT ME THE WHOLE TIME I WAS READING! (As you can see, using all caps also has that same effect.)

Here is just a snippet of one scene, with character names changed to protect the guilty:

"Erin, this is not a battle!" I retort.

"And it's not a chess game! It's dinner with a nice man!"

"You're so cynical, Erin!" chimes in Kristy.

"I think it's really romantic!"

Do you get the picture? For your dialogue to ring true, it should read the way people really talk. And other than on trashy reality TV shows, most people don't yell at each other all that often.…

Fiona writes: Over the past few two days more than twenty thousand people have downloaded my new novel The Most Beautiful Thing. They were going like hotcakes. Every few seconds I could click on the downloads and see the figure go up by ten or twenty.

This morning, in the space of two hours, I have sold one.

The difference? £3.99 ($6.50). This is how much my book costs now. The book that took me two years of research, writing & re-writing. The book me & Kaspa started a publishing company to publish, and designed the cover for, and proofed over and over. The book about Joe, who I care very deeply about.

Of course, that's not the whole story.

My…

Kimberly Reid is author of the Langdon Prep YA mystery series, featuring a high school girl named Chanti Evans, who's mom is an undercover copy. Book 2, Creeping With the Enemy, is out this week. Since I'm writing an advice book for writers, I've been asking writer friends to share their own writing tips. Below, Kim shares the best writing advice she ever got and her tips on other good writer sites (besides She Writes).

For more on Kim and her books, please visit her website and her Facebook page.…