A Truly Fantastic Guide to Screenplay Writing (and story structure)

I came across this really helpful slideshow which distills storytelling down to its basic elements. While it focuses mainly on writing a screenplay, the info is applicable to any type of storytelling. Great resource!

Biting the Bullet: Manuscript Submission

Over the past few months, I've written a book. Actually, several. The first book is a kids sci-fi novel, the first in a trilogy. I've already written the 2nd and 3rd books and have begun planning a fourth. At the same time, I've also written another, totally unrelated novel and am starting on the sequel to it.

I've been revising and re-revising this first manuscript for weeks. This is a good thing because I want to make sure that whatever I send out is the best that it can be. But I've also been afraid of the eventual next step: Submitting to an agent. Today I bit the bullet.

I submitted portions of my manuscript (depending on their guidelines) to 4 agents in hopes that one of them will like what they see. Odds are, they won't. But that's not important. What matters is that I took this step.

I am neither an optimist nor a pessimist; a realist. So in reality, I know the chances of being picked up by an agent are slim. BUT, I still want people to read this (and the following books).

Fingers Crossed!!

Writing novels - a new project

Writing a novel is something I've wanted to do for years, but have never seriously tried. To be honest, I've tried to write stories and books, but never felt like they were good enough for the grownup book market. So last fall I had an idea - write a kids' book!

I was inspired by my older daughter, who is a voracious reader. Attempting to write a book geared towards her was much easier than trying to write something geared towards adults. Once I got started, I found a groove and since October I'e have written 2 books with a third and fourth already in the works.

The first and second book are part of a series of three books. I chose sci-fi as the genre because it is something I love and because it is a nice backdrop for a story. At the moment, I'm polishing the first book as much as I can before I submit it to a bunch of agents.

My long term dream is to be a full time author. However, the short term dream at this point is to get one book published, then get all of them published. As I make progress, I'll post updates.