In this episode, Leslie and Alyssa critique the opening pages from a middle grade novel. They discuss raising the stakes, increasing tension, rapid fire dialogue, and incorporating more telling detail.
Ready to read on? You can find it here: The Escape (The Chronicles of PJ Book 1).
In this episode, Alyssa and Leslie critique the opening pages from a science fiction novel. They discuss choosing tense, rapid fire and commonplace dialogue, and well-executed backstory.
Interested in finding out what happens to Bramen? Check out the full story.
Here's an article about using present tense.
In this episode, Leslie and Alyssa critique the opening pages from a fantasy novel. They discuss cadence and diction, dialogue, opening lines, and setting and maintaining reader expectations.
Nightblade is available on Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, and iBooks.
Check out all Garrett's doing on his website.
NSFW
In this episode, Alyssa and Leslie critique the opening pages from a paranormal thriller. They discuss character relationships, the “normal” world versus the supernatural world, incorporating specific and telling detail, and redundancy in dialogue.
In this episode, Alyssa and Leslie critique the opening pages from a horror novel. They discuss tightening the opening to get to the paranormal elements more quickly, the possible inclusion of humor, and how technical issues are an issue for this piece.
In this episode, Leslie and Alyssa critique the opening pages from Edward Antrobus's Once Upon a Saturn Moon, an as-yet unpublished science fiction adventure story. They discuss oversharing and how it relates to showing versus telling, clusters of echoes, and the difference between a series of situations and a plot.
In this episode, Alyssa and Leslie critique the opening pages from High Flyer by Trudi Jaye, an as-yet-unpublished paranormal/urban fantasy novel. They discuss grounding the reader in the genre, British versus U.S. English, echoes, visceral details, and starting the story with an inciting incident.
Listeners, you can get the first two books in the Magic Carnival series for free if you sign up for Trudi's mailing list; more information is available here.
NSFW
In this episode, Leslie and Alyssa critique the opening pages from an erotica novel. They discuss different types of erotica, character development, tools for assessing complexity of language and readability, and the reader experience.
Here's a link to the article about readability statistics we mentioned.
Ready to read the rest of Naked Montreal? Grab a copy right here.
In this episode, Leslie and Alyssa critique the opening pages from Bryan Cohen's Ted Saves the World, a YA superhero fantasy novel. They discuss: why this opening works so well for the story, strong opening lines, including visceral details to ground your reader, and strengthening verbs.
In this episode, Alyssa and Leslie critique the opening pages from a literary short story. They discuss omniscient viewpoint, deepening setting and characterization, and making good on the implicit promise in your title and hook.
In this episode, Leslie and Alyssa critique the opening pages from a fantasy novella in progress. They discuss information dumps, delaying back story, and revisit elaborate dialogue tags. They go on to discuss overcapitalization and why that’s a problem for your reader, and leave you with an editorial mission based on what this submission teaches us about characterization.
In this episode, Alyssa and Leslie critique a religious inspirational short story. They discuss showing versus telling, creating an active and vivid setting, rapid fire dialogue, and strengthening the darkest moment.
In this episode, Leslie and Alyssa critique an excerpt from a crime/thriller novel in progress. They discuss what’s working for the unconventional opening, dive deeper into active openings, and ask for clues about the protagonist’s competence. They go on to discuss varying sentence structure, the creation of new words, and what to avoid with elaborate dialogue tags.
In this episode, Alyssa and Leslie critique an excerpt from a middle grade fantasy book, Donovan Scherer's short story, "Think Tank." They discuss: point of view/head hopping, passive voice, streamlining language for impact, echoes, strengthening verbs, and hesitant words.
In this episode, Leslie and Alyssa critique an excerpt from a gritty noir novel in progress. They discuss what works for the story, as well as how the story might benefit from delaying description, how to punctuate dialogue. They go on to discuss word choice and diction, and the use of inflammatory words. This episode is NSFW.
In this episode, Alyssa and Leslie critique the opening pages of a mystery novel in progress. They discuss: tense, point of view, consistency in characterization, dialect in dialogue, permissions and copyright issues, and touch on the issue of showing versus telling.
In this episode, Leslie and Alyssa critique the opening pages of a steampunk novel in progress. They discuss what was working for the story, how to improve the opening paragraphs, tension, and open-ended questions. They go on to talk about getting past the police description, diction, and identifying echoes.
In this episode, Alyssa and Leslie launched the podcast with the critique of an excerpt from a romance novel. They discuss some requirements of the romance genre, and what constitutes a love interest and well-motivated character. They go on to talk about how to follow through on your story’s hook and avoid information dumps, false starts, echoes, and the passive voice.
