Collection of cover images with "Girl" in the title.

What’s in a Name? Why Every Bestseller Has the Word “Girl” in It

Posted on by Natalia Locatelli

What’s in a name? Have you ever gone through a bookstore or perused the many book titles on Amazon and thought to yourself, “Who came up with this title? Better yet, who came up with this cover? I’ve read this book and it has nothing to do with ball gowns or staircases!”

Image of woman from Death to Stock Photography.

Using Character Description to Move Your Plot Along

Posted on by Natalia Locatelli

Writing believable character descriptions is hard. Writing believable character descriptions is hard. I don’t really need to tell you that but it does get right to the heart of a big problem in writing. Part of the influence of bad writing stems from fanfiction writers going legit, although this post isn’t going to be about fanfiction writing. As a long-time former fanfiction writer myself, making the transition to writing non-fanfiction (and writing better in general) took a lot of hard work and will be the spotlight of a future blog. Writing character descriptions was probably the first big hurdle I came across when I was making that transition.

Have you ever read a long description that starts out with hair color and length, eye-color, vague height, clothing, and even shoe type? Here’s some advice for how to do it better.