Author: jimena.i.novaro
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Why It’s Okay to Re-Read Books Again and Again (and Again)
I grew up in a small town in Argentina that consistently ran bookstores out of business. There was a tiny library that didn’t have any interesting books. It was before tablets, so I didn’t have access to ebooks. But I really, really loved to read. That’s probably why I developed the habit of re-reading my…
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Revision Strategies for When All Seems Lost
This week, I decided that the writing tip I wanted to share with you all would be easier to show in a video than a blog post! This video covers my revision process for The Relic Spell. I share a few strategies I developed along the way to get it from a total mess of…
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Eight Strategies for Choosing Chapter Titles
I’ve heard all sorts of opinions about whether you should give titles to your chapters. Some readers say they love chapter titles, others hate them, others simply don’t notice whether they’re there.In my first novel, Blue Rabbit, I used snippets of song lyrics as chapter titles. My second novel, The Relic Spell, which goes on…
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Five Ways to Tell if You Have a Passive Protagonist (And if You Do, How to Fix Them)
We all encounter the problem of a passive protagonist at some point, whether we realize it ourselves or have a beta reader or editor point it out to us. But is your protagonist truly passive? Is that so bad, really? And if it is bad, how do you fix it? All these questions have run…
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How to Subtly Introduce a Magic System – Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor
One of the most impressive things about Laini Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke and Bone is the way she introduces the magic system of her world. She develops her readers’ understanding of her story’s magic in a way that feels suspenseful, subtle, and never overwhelming.It’s tough to give the reader enough information to understand the world…
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How to Introduce Main Characters with Style – The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater
Maggie Stiefvater’s The Raven Cycle is one of my favorite young adult series of all time. A big part of why I love it so much is the characters: they feel real and complicated in frustrating, beautiful, relatable ways.As a writer, I’m always trying to learn from what other authors do well. That’s why today…