Category Archives: Technique

Successful techniques for powerful writing

Technique

Types of subplots

This entry is part 2 of 7 in the series Subplots

There are lots of ways to do a subplot. The three basic types I’m outlining today are all designed to help make your story more interesting, more on-theme and more . . . better.

Mirroring subplots

Mirror Reflection Fork - B&WLast week, we defined subplots as “a part of a story that shows some sort of progress, growth or change, but isn’t the main plot of a story.” A mirroring subplot mirrors the main action of the story in an important way—but it doesn’t completely duplicate the main plot.

One common example of this might be in a romance, to have two secondary characters also falling in love. They might face a similar obstacle to their Happily Ever After as the main couple, and maybe they’d be able to offer advice and help along the journey.

Contrasting subplots

A contrasting subplot shows the opposite sort of progress, growth or change as the main plot—for example, a secondary character exhibits the same weakness as the main character, but refuses to go on a journey to growth like the main character does.

One important thing to remember here is that to not undermine the main character’s arc, the secondary character should reap negative consequences for failing to grow. This contrasts the main character’s benefits of growth, and thus reinforces that subconsciously to the reader.

Complicating subplots

These subplots don’t show growth, but do represent change. These subplots aren’t necessarily complete stories in and of themselves, but they intersect with the main plot in very important ways, so much that they’re inextricable from the main plot.

If it’s a subplot where one of the main characters plays a role, perhaps it’s an important task they must accomplish on their question: obtaining a liquor license for their dream restaurant, maybe. The clerk at the state office is not only recalcitrant, but starts a whole new series of problems (assuming starting the restaurant isn’t the main plot of the book, of course. Then this would probably be part of the main plot).

However this subplot intersects the main plot, it changes the character’s trajectory. The subplot may not relate directly to the theme of the book like the mirroring and contrasting subplots. It may just cause problems. Meddling secondary characters—even if they’re trying to be helpful—often fall into this category.

Iceberg

Subplot subtypes

The content of the subplot also constitutes an important “subtype.” A romantic subplot, for example, focuses on the development of a romance. There can be mystery subplots, coming of age subplots, subplots dealing with the character’s professional life or personal life or vendetta—the sky’s (almost) the limit.

A few “genres” don’t fit into subplots well. It’s hard to do an adventure subplot, i.e. an adventure story only told as a subplot, because adventures tend to be quite large, and can easily overtake the main plot of a novel.

What do you think? What other types of subplots have you seen or written?

Photo credits: Mirrored fork—zeevveez; Iceberg—NOAA’s National Ocean Service

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Technique

New writing series: Subplots!

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This entry is part 1 of 7 in the series Subplots

I asked you what you wanted, and the #1 writing series choice was subplots! So today I’m kicking off our next writing series!

subplots series. Photo by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

A subplot is a part of a story that shows some sort of progress, growth or change, but isn’t the main plot of a story. A few examples of subplots include:

  • Jenny’s life (especially away from Forrest) in Forrest Gump
  • Ron & Hermoine’s romance in the Harry Potter series (one of dozens of subplots!)
  • Tom’s affair with Myrtle in The Great Gatsby
  • Katniss’s “romance” with Peeta and somewhat Gale in The Hunger Games
  • The plot of individual, single episodes of Burn Notice and other serial TV shows

None of these stories constitute the main plot of their stories: Forrest Gump’s life, Harry Potter’s battle against Voldemort, Gatsby’s obsession with Daisy, surviving the Hunger Games, getting back Michael’s life as a spy, etc. And yet they’re still vital to the story (in varying degrees) because they influence the main plot.

Subplots can be really tricky! You have to show enough of them to understand what’s going on, you have to make sure they’re intertwined with and thus vital to the story, and yet somehow you need to balance them so they don’t overwhelm or contradict the main action of the story.

No wonder we want to learn how to do them well!

Coming up in the series:

  • Types of subplots
  • Balancing the subplot and the main plot
  • How to know when the subplot should go
  • How to make a subplot vital to the story

Previous posts on subplots: Elizabeth S. Craig’s secret sauce: subplots

Other writing series:


Learn the best way to outline your next successful novel with the free PDF of The Plot Thickens (mwahahaha)		 Free Deep POV guide
Really get into your characters’ heads for voice that pops with the free PDF Guide to Deep POV

Creating conflict: Draw your readers in and keep them reading: proven tools & techniques—no gimmicks!To get the free PDF, just share the automatic message via one of these social networks, using the buttons below:
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Photo by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory via Flickr & CC

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Mechanics, Technique

Fix-it Friday: Overstuffed sentences

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Line-editing is now part of editing my book Fix-It Fridays!

fifWay back in our Secret Sauce Series, we talked about overstuffed sentences—sentences where we’re trying too hard to appear writerly, putting too much information, being entirely too clever, and just generally confounding our readers.

Once upon a time, I must have held a subconscious belief that a “real” writer made their sentences work two and three times as hard. That’s probably true in a way—each action of a story, each scene and maybe each sentence can accomplish more than one thing.

But instead, I took that to mean that the more complex a sentence, the better. But that’s simply not the case. Yes, sentences should work hard for us as writers and serve several purposes. But there’s a limit to how much you can pack into a sentence or paragraph and still be intelligible to readers.

Here are a couple such overweighted sentences from my own works:

#1 (the passage that taught me this lesson!)

How must the buildings that were so familiar she hardly noticed them look to Father O’Leary? Three years ago, she compared the Gothic chapel, its stone façade flanked by blazing maples in a carpet of lawn, to her parents’ church in city center. At the time, St. Adelaide seemed a suburban oasis; three weeks ago she was disabused of that notion.

“I’m sure it’ll get to feelin’ like home soon enough,” she murmured.

And #2

I slip onto the back porch, but the door latch I’m expecting to hear behind me doesn’t come by the time I reach the stairs.

And #3

Those fears and feelings, raw and vulnerable, echoing through me, must be why I finally have to pull back to wipe away my tears.

Next time (Sept 13 27!), I’ll share how I fixed them—but first, what would you do? Come share!

Photo by HomeSpot HQ

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Mechanics, Technique

Julie Coulter Bellon’s Secret Sauce: The CLAW (and self-editing)

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by Julie Coulter Bellon

Julie Coulter BellonMy secret sauce in making the leap to being a published author was learning how to be a better self-editor.  I think when you know the areas to look for that are your personal weaknesses as a writer, you can better learn the craft to make that your strength.

Here is my personal self-editing checklist.

First I do the CLAW  

I start with the easy stuff because it makes me feel good to check it off.

Check for basic editing errors like:

  • Page numbering and blank pages
  • Too many adjectives or adverbs:  “It was a beautiful sunny June day and the lush, emerald green grass reflected the bright yellow sunlight and hurt my eyes.  Or, “She desperately wanted to kiss him passionately.”
  • Tense consistency and subject/verb agreement:  “He couldn’t believe that his boss had fired him over a typographical error. He is a great worker and always turns in his projects on time.”  Subject/verb agreement, “He run to the store.”
  • Clichés: “She’ll come crawling back to me.”  “He couldn’t beat around the bush any longer.”
  • Repetitious descriptions:  Weave in your first descriptions and make them powerful enough that you don’t have to beat your reader over the head with more.
  • Favorite words: “really”  “just”  “some”  “that”
  • Too many dialogue tags or weird tags:   James laughed at her pain. “Don’t bother trying to get away,” he replied.  We don’t need the replied because we know it’s James talking.  And use “said,” in most instances because when you try to get fancy “he pontificated,” or “she remonstrated,” it can take the reader out of the story.
  • Chapter or POV breaks.  Double check that those are correct and done.

Let someone else read it that will give me good feedback.  Not my mother or grandma, but someone who will be honest and somewhat brutal.

Always print it out and read a hard copy.  Mistakes will jump out at me that way.  Sometimes putting it into a different font can also be helpful in spotting mistakes.

Walk-away for a few hours, days or weeks and come back with fresh eyes.  I’ve created something and I need a bit of time to enjoy that, but I keep thinking about it, and when I come back to it, I’m ready to make the changes I need to.  Anything that doesn’t advance the story must be cut out, even if it’s my favorite part.

So, now I’ve done the basic CLAW checklist, then I send it out to beta readers for some feedback.  But I don’t wait around for them to get back to me.  While they have it, I print it out myself and read it front to back for any other little changes I might want to make.  Once that’s done, I’m ready for the second round of self-editing.

My second round of self-editing is where I go through that hard copy and look for specific problem areas.  (For some reason I see mistakes better on a hard copy.  It can be done on the computer as well. Maybe I’m just getting old, or my old journalism habits are coming through!)

(Also, I know I’ve seen a lot of these areas on Jordan’s previous secret sauce blog entries and I have to say I’ve learned a lot from them and for my next book I can delve even deeper into some of these.)  Here’s my specific list for the second round.

Second Round of Self-Editing—The Editor’s Checklist

  1. Show don’t tell—show us what your character is experiencing in that moment.  What does he/she hear, feel, or smell?  Let the reader be in the moment with them.
  2. Passive voice—the lady is being kissed by a masked man.  The masked man is kissing the lady.”  Keep it active and concentrate on the action.
  3. POV shifts—usually one POV per scene
  4. Chapter hooks, beginning and end.  Make the reader want to keep on turning pages.
  5. Does each character have a motivation?
  6. Is the setting done well?  Does it contribute to the piece?
  7. Is the story timeline consistent?
  8. Does the conflict keep the tension throughout the story?
  9. Do you have a natural flow—nothing contrived?
  10. Is there a balance of narrative, action, and dialogue?

This round takes a bit more time, but it is totally worth it when I catch mistakes like my character having blue eyes in chapter one that magically change to brown eyes in chapter fifteen.  Going through the manuscript ten times looking for specific issues like the ones above has saved me so many times.  (That’s why I can never show people my first or even fifth drafts!  You would laugh.)  Also, by the time you’re done going through it so many times you’re going to hate your manuscript and that’s always a good sign that it’s close to being finished!

Which leads me to the last round of self-edits—the big picture issues.

Do You Know Your Big Picture Problem Areas? 

(If you find problems here, you will bang your head against the wall for a while trying to fix it, but make no mistake, you will be glad you fixed it at this stage instead of when a reader/editor/agent tells you.)  (See what I did there? Make no mistake? Haha)

Characterization—Are we privy to the main character’s thoughts, or do we only skim his/her surface? Is this a character we simply witness, or a character we understand deeply?

Plot—Is your plot contrived or unbelievable?  Do you know the end and work toward a satisfying conclusion with no dangling loose ends or unnecessary beats?  Are there elements of truth in it that readers can relate to?

Continuity—Are your characters consistent throughout with no name changes, eye color changes or backstory inconsistencies?  Is your timeline appropriate? Are settings and events consistent?

Details—Do you have a hard time finding balance and detail people to death?  Are you focusing on the small picture or keeping an eye on the big picture?

Once that is all done, there’s just one more step.

Now What? Change Hats Once More

Take off your editor’s hat and put on your writing hat again. Make the necessary changes from what you saw in your piece on your three editing rounds.  Drown the piece in red ink and bring it back to life with new words and ideas.  Make it flow.

I know it’s hard sometimes, but enjoy the journey of revision.  Rewriting can be rejuvenating and breathe new life into your characters.  Don’t be discouraged.  This is your opportunity to make the story shine and bring your ideas to life. One of my favorite quotes is by Arthur Polotnik.

“You write to communicate to the hearts and minds of others what’s burning inside you. And we edit to let the fire show through the smoke.”  Arthur Polotnik

Let your fire show so your readers can experience your story the way you saw it in your head.

The more you learn about yourself as a writer, the better able you are to self-edit and really improve in your craft.  Of course this is one of the first steps in your journey to publishing and doesn’t substitute for a critique group and a professional edit, but once you are this far, your piece is polished enough to go on in the process.

About the Author

Julie Coulter Bellon is the mom of eight children and the author of nine books. She balances being a mom with being a writer and an avid reader. She blogs at LDS Writer Mom. Her latest release is Ashes Ashes.

Sophia Naziri is wanted for questioning in the murder of a U.S. senator. She’s worried the police will show up on her doorstep any moment, but when Detective Colby Black appears, it’s to help her put out a kitchen fire, not take her in. Yet. His easy smile and persistence in getting to know her pushes all her troubles to the back of her mind, until a hit man tracks her down. Getting arrested becomes the least of her worries and the handsome detective could be her only way out—if she tells him the truth.

Colby Black’s sniper skills have been a blessing and a curse to him. As a member of a Hostage Negotiation Team, he can use them to save people, but sometimes he can’t protect the innocent despite his best efforts. When a hostage situation goes bad, he tries to put it behind him by helping out his mysterious next-door neighbor, Sophia Naziri. But she pulls Colby into a web of lies and conspiracy that will force him to use every skill he has in order to survive. Faced with the moment of truth, can he trust anyone around him—including the woman at the center of it all?

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Technique

The power of Because

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My last term of college, I took a 200-level class on English literary theory to fulfill the final requirement of an English minor. I’d already taken the upper-level English courses I needed—but the first week of class, my professor said something that made me wish I’d taken his class a lot sooner.

The typical thesis statement of a paper (say, written on a high school level especially) is usually insufficient, he Just Because by Lee leesaid. In fact, to get to a real thesis, you should add the word “Because,” and expand from there. For example:

Lame-o thesis: In The Age of Innocence, Newland Archer is a dilettante, even when social morés no longer prohibit him from acting.

This is especially lame-o because basically all you’d have to do to prove your thesis is quote the line in the opening scene where Newland Archer identifies himself as a dilettante, and then review the final scene of the book. Done.

Better thesis: Because Newland Archer is, “at heart a dilettante,” even when social morés no longer prohibit him from acting, his son Dallas represents the fulfillment of his dilettante desires and the evolution of societal norms.

(Man, I wrote a dang good paper about that book. Waaay better than that example. Wish I could remember the thesis!)

What’s Because got to do with it (writing)

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A couple months ago, I was preparing for a revision and thinking about my book’s theme. I’d really reduced it down to the very core principle—how do you get more crystallized than three short words?

Love is strength.

But realistically, is that a theme? Is that something worthy to be explored in fiction? Is that something you want to read about?

Meh.

Then “Because” popped into my mind.

Because love is strength . . .

I filled in the blank as it pertained to my story, I think, but there’s no one right answer here. That’s not what’s important—what’s important is digging deeper than a belief statement to create an action statement. It may not be enough to have a theme you can state simply—in fact, that might be a detriment.

What do you think? Have you tried the power of “Because”? How would you fill in the blank “Because love is strength . . .”?

Photo by Angel A. Acevedo, via Flickr & CC

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Technique

Rachelle Christensen’s Secret Sauce: the unexpected

by Rachelle J. Christensen

Rachelle ChristensenOne of the things I love most about writing is the capacity to learn. I love learning! At times it seems overwhelming because there is so much that I need to learn, to master, and I’ve already been working hard on my craft for over a decade. On the flip-side, writing will never be stale to me because there is always room for improvement. Thank goodness I enjoy a good challenge—usually!

Some of my favorite books are those that have an unexpected twist and they aren’t found only in mystery/suspense novels. I’ve found the unexpected in every genre of fiction and each time it has made the story more memorable because of how the twist affects the characters, the plot, even the setting.

I’m a critical reader, so I take note of how predictable a plot might be, what surprised me pleasantly or unpleasantly. It’s been suggested that if we look at things from a different angle, a whole new world opens up. I agree, and I think that if we turn scenes on their ear, so to speak, we often discover something fabulous just waiting for us to incorporate into our plot.

Often, when I’m writing and/or revising, I’ll come across a scene that needs some work. If I dissect my scene and then turn a few things in a different direction, new life flows into the scene. It might be something simple. Perhaps my character has sudden insight into a problem, a car stops working on the way home from the mechanic, or the power goes out on a perfectly sunny day, but each of these things creates a shift in the scene with more questions that must be answered. When you create the unexpected in your writing, you invite the reader to become more invested in the story.

After I’ve gone through the first few drafts of a novel, I like to go back and examine each chapter to see if there are any weak spots. When I find those spots, I ask myself if everything is going along just as expected. If it is, then I know I need to shake things up by re-examining the scene for different possibilities. Instead of having my character run down her usual trail, I’ll have her spot something—a deer, an abandoned tent, or a sack lunch in the weeds—that takes her off-course.

There are bigger ways that we can create the unexpected. The villain could turn out to be the hero or vice versa. A person of trust might betray the character or a safety net ends up making someone more vulnerable.

I’m sure that you can think of a number of books and characters in those books who did something unexpected. Those twists make stories memorable. I encourage you to look at your story from a different angle and see if there is something fabulous hiding there, just waiting to be discovered.

About the Author
Rachelle J. Christensen is a mom of four cute kids. She has an amazing husband, three cats, and five chickens. Her first novel, Wrong Number, was awarded Outstanding Book of the Year from the League of Utah Writers and was also a 2010 Whitney Finalist. Her second suspense novel, Caller ID, was released March 2012. She is also the author of a nonfiction book, Lost Children: Coping with Miscarriage for Latter Day Saints. Rachelle has a novella coming out in the fall with a Timeless Romance Anthology by Mirror Press.

Rachelle enjoys singing and songwriting, playing the piano, running, motivational speaking, and of course reading. Visit www.rachellewrites.blogspot.com to learn more about upcoming books.

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Technique

Fix-It Friday: Fixing Info Dumpy Dialogue

Have you signed up for the I Spy a Secret blogfest yet? One more week!

fifSooo it’s kind of been two months since I posted the first part of this. Whoops!

So back in May, we looked at a couple of ways to identify your info dumping dialogue. Some of the guidelines:

  • If one character is sharing something with another character who should already know this—that might be an info dump
  • If you’re really trying to talk to the reader with the dialogue—that might be an info dump
  • If it’s more than a sentence or two of backstory—that might be an info dump
  • If it doesn’t have anything to do with what’s going on in the present scene—that’s an info dump.

Fixing that Info Dumpy Dialogue

Not all exposition, even in dialogue, is bad. We always need to maintain the tension level while conveying necessary information, and there are a number of ways to do that, including inner tension, bypass dialogue, borrowed conflict and other techniques. Frankly, all of these examples could use some of that!

So let’s look at how those principles apply to our examples from last time.

“As you know, my darling, we’ve been married for seven years, and our two children, Tina and Tommy, are almost perfect angels.”

“Yes, my love, and we’ve lived in this same house for three years, but we’re thinking about moving.”

So obviously we have a married couple here. There is no reason they’d ever say something like this to one another. So how can we convey this information?

  • First, check which information is vital. This will depend on the story, of course. Do we need to know they’ve been married for exactly seven years? They’ve lived here for three years? Toss the info that has no bearing on the story.
  • Next, decide whether dialogue is the best “mode” to convey this information. If the only available person to talk to already knows it, the answer is a flat-out NO. If you can find someone who needs to be informed of the facts—the cop who’s looking for her missing husband, maybe?—they can really come in handy here.
  • Find a source of tension or conflict. Maybe Tina isn’t his child, and the years of lying are finally wearing down on the mother.
  • Finally, slip in shards of backstory at a time, usually in context of something else. The cop looking for her husband, perhaps. The wall color she’s always hated in this living room, etc.

“That’s the reactor or coil. It’s a a passive two-terminal electrical component which resists changes in electric current passing through it. It consists of a conductor such as a wire, usually wound into a coil. When a current flows through it, energy is stored in a magnetic field in the coil. When the current flowing through an inductor changes, the time-varying magnetic field induces a voltage in the conductor, according to Faraday’s law of electromagnetic induction, which by Lenz’s law opposes the change in current that created it.”

This long speech is an info dump in dialogue or in narration. Let’s assume the character is talking to someone who doesn’t know anything about the topic.

Seriously, is this much information necessary to the story? Unless every bit of technical information here actually impacts the plot or the characters, or if we would be totally unable to understand the action of the story without it, we don’t need this. (I don’t understand it, and apparently I wrote it, so . . . awesome.) Face it: this is showing off your research. And your research involves reading Wikipedia.

If you want your character to look knowledgeable, focus on the reaction to his information, and summarize what he says. For example, “Dr. Liffenblatz explained the reactor, but his string of technical jargon only left me even more confused.”

“Do you remember Jimmy? The guy from high school who was virtually president of the A/V club, but then went on to make it big in the dot-com boom? He managed to get out before the bubble burst, and he’s still living large in Silicon Valley. I heard he actually sold Page & Brin the name for Google. It was originally called Backrub, of course.”

Good old Jimmy. Let’s say Jimmy will be an important figure in this story (because if he won’t, you’re losing your reader RIGHT HERE).

First of all, there’s just flat out too much information in this passage. The last sentence is totally unnecessary here, and most likely unnecessary altogether.

Now, the rest of the passage is still a bit too long of a speech for one person to deliver. One idea: break this up among multiple speakers. Make it a conversation instead of a monologue. If you’ve got two or three people reminiscing about high school together, it’s much more natural to exchange information—but again, only if we’re actually informing (or trying to inform) the other speaker of something s/he doesn’t already know.

“Look, I know you’re going through a hard time with your breakup, but I just need to tell you this right this minute: when I was seven, I had this puppy, and he got lost and we looked everywhere for him . . . [ten pages later] . . . and that’s why I don’t like cheese.”

Um, wow. Most likely, there’s one excellent way to fix this: the delete key.

What do you think? How would you fix this dumpy dialogue?

Photo by HomeSpot HQ

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Technique

Annette Lyon’s Secret Sauce: Point of View

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by Annette Lyon

Annette Lyon-FALL 2012When I first started writing seriously (back in the Jurassic era), the more I tried to learn, the more there seemed to be to learn. And there was so much.

For me, the language side of writing came relatively easy; my brain simply works in a way that grammar, usage, mechanics, and punctuation are easy to grasp. It was the bones of writing, the structure, the storytelling aspect, that took longer.

As I continued to write and study the craft, I began to see a pattern: whether it’s showing instead of telling, creating great description, rounding out characters, writing riveting action or just about anything else, one of the best ways to do all of those things is through a single tool in my writer’s toolkit.

My secret weapon is simple but powerful. Chances are if a scene isn’t working or the pace is aging or any number of other problems crop up, I can fix it by improving one thing: point of view.

I won’t go into the types of point of view here (first, limited third, tight third, omniscient, and so on). Study those yourself to learn contemporary trends and why different types work in different situations. (A great place to start: Orson Scott Card’s Character and Viewpoint.)

Here’s the secret: When you know who your POV character is for any given scene, the world of your story opens up to you.

For example, a writer recently asked me how to make his descriptions better; he wasn’t sure how much description to include of a room or some other location, or how to create a description without stopping the plot.

No surprise, my answer went straight to POV. I used the lobby at the conference we were at as an example. If it’s a man who has just walked in from the hot sun after hours of working on his car, chances are he’d first notice the Pepsi machine. Maybe he’d then be annoyed, because he’s a Coke guy. Maybe he then looks for a drinking fountain or settles for a Dr. Pepper before finding one of the couches to relax on—feet propped on the coffee table.

Or if it’s a business woman with a design background, maybe she’d first notice the decorative metal piece hanging on the wall—and either think it was tacky or unique and fun. She’d probably wonder who picked out the puke yellow paint for the walls, and if she took a seat on the couches, instead of reclining, she’d find a plug in the wall and prop open her laptop to work—likely giving Mr. Smelly Mechanic a look and wishing he’d put his arms down so he wouldn’t be quite so odiferous.

In both cases, I picked a specific personality to view the very same room, and each person found different items they noticed first. That’s the key with POV—what is the lens through which your character sees the world? What does this particular character notice? What does he or she like or dislike? What does he or she want?

If an eight-year-old girl obsessed with princesses came into the room, what would she notice first? What about a ninety-year-old retired biology professor? A middle-aged homeless woman?

What your character notices—whether in the description of a room, in dialog with other characters, what they see in another person’s demeanor—is just as important as what they don’t notice. How they do and do not feel about those things matters.

Imagine what the Harry Potter series would have been like written from Draco’s POV. Snape would be a total hero from page one. We’d think Hagrid is a nincompoop and view Dumbledore as a has-been.

The more I’ve played with POV in creating characters and scenes that come alive, the more POV almost feels like the best cheat ever—I can show without trying so hard, simply by remembering to look at the story world through my POV character eyes. My plot moves forward, the conflict intensifies, and more, all by staying true to POV.

Which is also why not knowing how to use POV well can have a disastrous effect of your story. Instead of pulling your reader into your world and holding them there, poor handling of POV pushes the reader out and constantly reminds them that they’re reading a story that someone else created.

Or worse, bad POV can confuse readers to the point that they shrug and simply give up, closing the book (or turning off the e-reader) and moving on to something else.

I’m almost a nerd about how excited I get over POV and all the many uses it has. It’s definitely my secret sauce, no matter what kind of story I’m writing.

About the Author
Annette Lyon is a Whitney Award winner, a two-time recipient of Utah’s Best in State medal for fiction, and the author of ten novels, a cookbook, and a grammar guide as well as over a hundred magazine articles. She’s a senior editor at Precision Editing Group and a cum laude graduate from BYU with a degree in English. When she’s not writing, editing, knitting, or eating chocolate, she can be found mothering and avoiding the spots on the kitchen floor. Find her online at blog.annettelyon.com and on Twitter: @AnnetteLyon

This year, she’s released Band of Sisters: Coming Home, the second edition of There, Their, They’re: A No-Tears Guide to Grammar from the Word Nerd, and novellas in the Timeless Romance Anthology series.

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