Helping to Change the World…Word by Word
The Steve Laube Agency
Helping to Change the World Word by Word
Are you as stunned as I am that we’re already weeks into 2017? I figure the beginning of an all-new year is a great time to share our all-new first lines! I love seeing what you all are working on, so jump in and share the first line—and ONLY the first line—of your current work in progress. Fiction, nonfiction, children’s book, whatever. Let the sharing begin!
Here’s mine:
His first breath of freedom in fifteen years was made even sweeter by the sure knowledge that retribution was at hand.
Thanks so much for sharing your tips and sources for ideas last week. What fun to read your thoughts and insights. I’d invite you all to review those comments from time to time, considering if one or more of them might not help you expand the ways you develop ideas. For today, though, I want to encourage you to give something a try, and that’s an Idea Journal. This isn’t a regular journal. It’s …
The beginning of a whole new year seems like a good time to think about new ideas. Specifically, new ideas for stories to write. We all have our favorite sources for new ideas. Some pull story ideas from breaking news stories, some from their own personal experiences or struggles, some from the lives of those they know, some from all of the above and more. Next week I’ll share some ways to spark …
I love using exclamation points! Don’t you? How about interrobang sentences?! Finally, I think we should bring those back, don’t you?! And not just in dialogue, but in narrative! Finally, shouldn’t readers just really ought to be able to keep up with run-on sentences, no matter how complex, or whether or not they stay on topic, and I wonder how many people could diagram a sentence that’s simple, …
Good publishing takes time. Time to write well. Time to edit well. Time to find the right agent. Time to find the right publisher. Time to edit again and re-write. Time to design well. Time to market well. While there can be a lot of activity it still feels like “time” is another word for “wait.” No one likes to wait for anything. Our instant society (everything from …
[This post had to be updated and revised in March 2017 and again in August 2019 due to numerous changes in the industry.] The question came up recently asking which retail store is the most important to a CBA publisher for selling print editions of their books? And to which store are the most books sold? CBA is a label to describe the Christian book market. It used to be an acronym for Christian …
Whenever I go to a conference, I am privileged to hear about a wide range of stories and ideas. I always want the writer to succeed in marketing work to editors, so often I’ll ask how much romance the story has. Sometimes it has quite a bit. Other times, not so much. One writer told me that a male character was “intrigued” by a female character, but that was the extent of that thread, and more …
Every profession has its list of “sins” which can forever taint a person, group or organization guilty of committing one or more of them. Singers who are revealed to lip-sync to someone else’s vocalization are never taken seriously again. Athletes found to be taking performance-enhancing drugs are forever flagged with an asterisk next to their accomplishments. A political leader who violates the …
We’ve all heard the expression, “You can’t make these things up.” For instance, you might get an eviction notice and be served divorce papers on the same day that your dog dies and you have an auto accident that puts you in the hospital with a broken back, which leads to your ex getting the kids full time and you being fired since you missed picking the kids up from school and you missed …
Last week I wrote about information dumps, offering sketches of Valencia, Brad, and Joan. You might have noticed that all three fit the antihero characterization. They aren’t the type of people most of us would seek to spend much time with in real life. So why should they be in a book, particularly as main characters? According to Dictionary.com, an antihero is: …
