I had an interesting challenge over the weekend. My niece, Maria, asked me to critique a couple of her stories. One of them was a class project and she got an A+ on it. <\/p>\n
Maria asked me to be honest (has she ever known her auntie to lie?). She is actually an excellent writer for any age. She is 12. <\/p>\n
How do you critique the work of a young writer? Your first priority should be to encourage him or her to keep writing, so you want to avoid discouraging words. I also felt it was counter-productive to nit-pick. Fine-tuning can come later. So I looked for the piece of advice or critique that could most significantly help Maria to improve her stories. Here\u2019s what I focused on\u2014her ending. She writes a rather tantalizing beginning (she makes you want to keep reading). The meat of her stories is strong. Her endings are nice, actually. Where I think she lets her reader down is somewhere between the middle and the end. I advised her to practice winding down\u2014transitioning from the active, \u201chappening\u201d middle to the conclusion so she doesn\u2019t end so abruptly.<\/p>\n
Knowing Maria, I\u2019m pretty sure that she quickly tires of the story. She wants to end it and move on to something else. In my brief critique, I suggested that she spend more time fleshing out that section between the middle and the end. In one story, she left conflicts unsettled and she passed right over her excellent opportunity to offer a lesson or help readers reach a conclusion.<\/p>\n
Do you end your stories properly? Do you bring your stories full circle? Do you resolve conflicts and allow lessons to be learned where appropriate? Do you ease your readers into your magnificent ending or do you just sort of leave them dangling in outer space?<\/p>\n
Leave your comment at this blogsite. <\/p>\n
When is Self-Publishing Self-Publishing?<\/strong> If you are confused as to what self-publishing means, what \u201cself-publishing\u201d companies do, etc. you might want to refer to this article. For one thing, we\u2019ve attempted to rescue the term \u201cself-publishing\u201d from those pay-to-publish companies and attribute it back to where it belongs\u2014indicating that an individual produced his\/her book through his\/her own publishing company.<\/p>\n You have not self-published if you don\u2019t own the ISBN and the only way you own an ISBN is if you purchase it under your publishing company name. <\/p>\n Read the enlightening article and let me know if you have any questions. PLFry620@yahoo.com. Also, do yourself a favor this holiday season, join SPAWN. Remember dues go up January 1, 2010. So act now. http:\/\/www.spawn.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n
\nHere\u2019s the link to the publishing options article Bobbi Florio Graham, Dan Poynter, Susan Daffron and myself (Patricia Fry) contributed to.
\n http:\/\/www.simonteakettle.com\/options.htm<\/a> <\/p>\n