Mind the Gap: great writing advice from the London tube system
In London, every time a train door opens, an automated female voice tells you to “Mind the gap,” so that you don’t fall into that nether space between the train and the platform. When I was in England last year I smiled every time I heard it. I was about to start a new novel, and Robert McKee’s book Story was on my mind. McKee is another of my screenwriting gurus (if you read this blog, you know I have a few of them—I think screenwriters are often better at talking about plot than novelists) and “the gap” is a concept he talks about a lot. I should say right off, though, that his...
Read MoreDeveloping Desire: Why Knowing What Your Character Wants May Not Be Enough
I started such a brilliant novel a few years ago. Oh it would have been groundbreaking, won awards, made me famous. At least that’s what I thought after I wrote the first chapter. It was about a girl who was searching through time for her long-lost boyfriend and soul mate, but he’d been born into another body and she didn’t know what he looked like. Brilliant! Okay, that’s debatable, but it really had desire. I had taken to heart what I’d learned from so many writing teachers and books: know what your character wants. She wanted this man. Bad. My favourite writing book at the...
Read MoreMy Interview with Author Cheryl Rainfield on Book Promotion
My first novel is coming out in three months and I’ve gone tharn. I’m a Watership Down bunny, wide-eyed and paralyzed, unable to move as the oncoming truck of my release date barrels toward me. On the one hand, I love that I’m publishing at a time when a book’s promotion isn’t completely out of an author’s hands. I have Twitter, Facebook, blogs, websites, give-aways, book trailers, Goodreads, tumblr, StumbleUpon, message boards, and a thousand other tools to help me get the word out. But does joining Twitter and Facebook actually translate into book sales? Do I really want to start...
Read MoreWriter’s Block, Writing Partners, and “the Dread”
Back before I started my first novel, I asked my full-time writer friends how they did it, how they sat down at their desks every day without that feeling of dread, that feeling that their desk was repelling them like a magnet. None were very helpful, I must say. I got some blank stares, maybe a few, “Y…es, I remember that it was like that once…” but no definite answers as to how to combat that particular form of writer’s block that sometimes affects new writers: the inability to get started and keep the momentum going. When I was a young student just beginning to tell people (in a...
Read MoreMichael Hauge—A Different Way of Thinking about Character Development
Last month a number of other children’s authors and I attended the Screenwriters’ Summit in Toronto. I’ve already written about what I learned from speakers Linda Seger and John Truby, and now I’ve finally found a moment to write about my favourite speaker of the conference, Michael Hauge. Because all the speakers have books that they’d love you to buy, I haven’t summarized their entire talks; instead Ive chosen the one nugget of wisdom in each that struck me the most. Michael Hauge is well known for his Six Stage Plot Structure, and he writes very powerfully about how to create...
Read MoreWorking Through an Agent’s Critique Letter
Check out my guest post over at the Adventures in Children’s Publishing blog! http://childrenspublishing.blogspot.com/search/label/Lena%20Coakley
Read MoreAbout Me
Hi! I'm Lena, a young adult fantasy author from Toronto.