The Chopping Blog

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The importance of first sentences
March 30, 2020
Your opening sentence doesn’t need to go down in history for its wit and charm, but it should still welcome readers to your liminal landscape so they may engage with your characters.
- On the craft
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Literary agents on VOICE
March 28, 2020
Voice is certainly difficult to define. It's subjective, too, certainly, but literary agents are fairly unanimous on its importance.
- Agent interviews
- On the craft
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Dialectal spelling: why it's probably not helping your manuscript
March 15, 2020
We frequently advise clients against using dialectal spelling. For better narrative immersion, and to put the “sound” of the accent in the readers’ imagination, it’s a good idea to simply let your readers know that a character has an accent, and demonstrate their accent with word choice and syntax rather than spelling.
- On the craft
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Query letter quandaries: pro tips from the pros
March 01, 2020
"A useful sentence to keep in mind is: When A (inciting incident) happens, B (character) must do C (action) otherwise/before D (catastrophe). You might need to play with that to make it fit your book but that covers the basics of what I need to know… who am I rooting for, what’s their problem, and what’s at stake if they fail?"
- Agent interviews
- On the craft
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- 2 comments
A good deal? Or a nice deal?
February 25, 2020
So which deal is your super awesome debut novel going to land? Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of manuscripts sell for less than $50,000. Of those, few sell for less than $5,000, and the rest fall somewhere in the middle.
- On the craft
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Literary agents on issues of word count
February 15, 2020
"The two biggies are word counts wildly out of line with your genre and choosing only iconic, hugely successful books as your comps." Sharon Pelletier
- Agent interviews
- On the craft
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Best-laid plans: the first in our series of self-paced writing courses
January 27, 2020
This course will lead you through the steps of drafting a solid outline, broken into either chapters or major scenes. Work at your own pace in our user-friendly Moodle site.
- On the craft
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Story skeleton: a plot primer
January 27, 2020
As Orson Welles said, “The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.” In this way, structure is an integral part of the art of storytelling. It is much more than a formula or cookie-cutter guide.
- On the craft
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Respect the twist
January 10, 2020
If you respect the twist, it can do great things for you, but when a twist is included as a matter of course, or at least without enough attention, it can sink your tale right at the most crucial moment.
- On the craft
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- 3 comments
The wand chooses the wizard: on writerly passion
January 06, 2020
We don’t usually choose our obsessions. They’re built-in, ready-made. You don’t need to justify a love for dragons or aliens or cowboys. You just need to own it.
- On the craft
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Everyone's a Loser – a guest post by Clifford Thurlow
December 09, 2019
When the work finally arrives back, a fait accompli, we sit over a kettle of coffee or something stronger and read it aloud before putting it to one side and taking HG Wells's advice, going back with the element of surprise and attacking the piece at an hour when it isn't expecting it.
- On the craft
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POV Basics: a perspective primer
November 18, 2019
If you’re not sure what POV best suits your narrative, play around. Write a scene from one character’s close third, then shift into their first-person perspective, then take a step back and rewrite the scene from the angle of another character altogether, or even a ghost or alien who is observing the action as a complete outsider.
- On the craft
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