Anna Staniszewski

Categories: Resources

• Memorable Opening Lines

  We’ve been talking a lot about story beginnings in my writing classes this semester. Last week, I had my students read this excerpt on opening scenes from Hooked by Les Edgerton. He makes lots of great points, but the one that really stood out to me was about opening lines.
  Spend an awful lot of time

• Two Great Writing Links

  I know it’s an off day for me, but I just wanted to take a moment to point you toward a couple worthwhile blog posts that I came across yesterday. Check them out when you have a minute.
  I’ll be back tomorrow for a WIP Update.
  Andrea Vlahakis continued yesterday’s POV discussion with some great thoughts on

• Choosing a Point of View

  Choosing the best POV for your story is an important step, but often people’s definitions of the different POVs vary so it can be tricky to know what you’re choosing and why you’re choosing it. Here’s my attempt at a simple breakdown of the most popular types of POV, with the pros and cons of

• Get Better Search Results For My Author Site

  Hey everyone, this is Anna’s husband, Ray, and I’m doing a guest post on how to get better search engine results for your author website. These tips will help you set up your website so that it will get better search results.
  1. Think like your visitors
  The first thing you have to do when you are

• Snow, Dogs, and Space

  Since this is one of the busiest times of the year, I know I’ve only had time skim blog posts this week. So I’ve decided to make today’s post easily skimmable. First off, I wanted to share a few pictures from the wee blizzard we had over the weekend. Even though we get snow every

• Top Posts of 2009

  Since it’s getting close to the end of the year, I thought it would be fun to go back and see which posts have been the most popular (i.e. the ones that have gotten the most traffic). Not surprisingly, they’re almost all on craft, a topic I love to blab about. Here are this year’s

• Using Sidekick Characters

  Yes, it’s time for another bit of wisdom from Writing the Breakout Novel. This time it’s on the topic of sidekicks in fiction. Maass begins by acknowledging the traditional uses of sidekicks; crime fiction, for example, is a perfect medium for sidekicks because they balance out the detective and help show just how smart s/he

• Children and Reading

  Yesterday I was reading an article by Jon Scieszka about his two years as the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. It was interesting to hear about his experiences and to get a breakdown of some of the advice he’s been giving people about children and reading over the past two years.
  Overall the advice is

• Revision Tip Roundup

  Now that NaNo is over, I’ve noticed there’s been a lot of revision advice floating around the internets. Everyone goes about revising a bit differently, but I think it’s interesting to read about other people’s methods and see what works for you. Here are some  revision tips I found especially helpful:
  -The great Laurie Halse Anderson

• When Are the Stakes High Enough?

  I have one WIP I’ve been working on for a few years. It’s a complicated story and I keep struggling to figure out how to tell it. It’s gone through so many versions at this point that it’s hard for me to figure out what it needs or what it’s lacking. But I keep coming