As an editor, I see the use of passive voice as a red flag in a manuscript. It strips out all the action and agency. Makes the text boring. Passive voice frequently appears in academic writing. The stuff no one wants to read. You can edit your own book manuscript for passive voice and hone your talents as a powerful writer with a few simple… [Read More]
Writing dialogue is about capturing a character’s voice and revealing her or his motivations. Good dialogue engages the reader in a dynamic exchange between characters. It quickens the pace when there is no action and moves the plot forward. Bad dialogue only relays expository information, which doesn’t feel real to the reader who can’t believe your characters would talk like that to each other. Although… [Read More]
Our blog’s “Gone Local” series aims to explore who and what the Ithaca area’s literary community has to offer. Be it bookstores, publishers, or local authors, each contributes invaluably to the bookish zeitgeist. Recently, Swenson Book Development contacted Larson Publications (of Burdett, NY) to get an independent publisher’s views on the literary business, the craft, and the community. Larson Publications started in 1982 as a… [Read More]
“A novel, biography, and memoir, all/three going at once.” This is how Kirsten Wasson describes her mother’s voracious literary appetite in the poem “One Way to Read.” The two lines, however, could well have been written to describe the author’s new collection of poems, Almost Everything Takes Forever, published by Antrim House Books. It is a lush, lithe, witty, emotionally frank series of postcards from… [Read More]
I’m not a fiction writer. I stick to what I know and what I know is English literature and social media. Yet this past week, I attended a workshop at the Tompkins County Public Library (TCPL) on writing historical fiction. On Wednesday night I assisted Jill Swenson, the host and experienced writer, editor and CEO of Swenson Book Development LLC. It was the last meeting… [Read More]
A Writing Group’s Writer On August 3rd at 6pm, Buffalo Street Books hosted Leslie Daniels for a discussion of her critically acclaimed novel/fictional memoir, Cleaning Nabokov’s House. (For a review of the book on our blog, follow this link. Or, watch the book trailer here.)The discussion was open to the public, and followed suit with the bookstore’s ongoing commitment to Ithaca’s literary community with their… [Read More]
