Nathan Bransford - The Forums

So I was all ready to read Between You and Me but started reading the excerpt of Insignia (released yesterday) and I bought the book and finished it. If anyone is looking for a young male character, the MC is only 14 years old. The plot isn't like any of the YA books out now so I really had NO idea ...

^^^ For one of my characters who is Irish I actually went back and referred to the Irish student (Seamus) in Harry Potter to see how she structured his sentences.

Be careful, because it is needed sometimes. I always check whether it is correct or not by removing the "that _____" clause -- if the sentence loses meaning it means "that" is correct. "Movies that are violent are not good for children." If you remove "that are vio...

The vice president at my first job out of college had a huge issue with the word "that" so I learned it's use pretty quickly I still fall into the habit of double spacing after periods. When I went through my manuscript and did a find-replace changing all . + double space to . + single spa...

I don't really post in here when I update, but on top of a new entry tonight I put up a new layout and wanted to show it off
http://www.amandaboyle.com/

Mark, have you read the Mazerunner series? It's the first YA book I thought of when you mentioned male MC.

I was sent Between You and Me by Goodreads.com so I'm going to start it tomorrow.

You can start at http://www.publishersmarketplace.com -- that's a legit site to find agents.

I live 2,500 away from my family and my roommate knows that if my door is closed I'm busy unless its really important so I don't have many interruption issues. As for writing in general, my mom loves my book (one of the few who read the first draft) and my dad is very supportive. I pretty much only ...

I think it's amusing that people put so much time and thought into foreign accents, but none into American ones. If an European character needs an accent written out then we may as well have characters from the NY area have spelled out accents as well. One common running joke w/ yankee accents is &q...

I don't mind different POVs of characters if it's done well, but switching from first the third person would really be confusing to me. I've yet to hear of a book written like that unless it was a prologue or a special circumstance. The tricky thing with two POVs (in 1st person) is that they need to...

What kind of strange things have been happening? We get no details about that. And you mention Jessie's "gift" as though it's an oversight, I want to know more about it.

I think this is where you need people who are unconnected with writing come into play. People who will just read it and not want to edit it or suggest plot changes. There were a couple spots I hit like that, and the best thing was when I had a couple friends and family read the first draft. It was s...

I just read all three books in the YA series "the Trylle trilogy" (Switched, Torn and Ascend)-- They were decent and easy reads. Read them all in a day (I was laid up with a sprained ankle). Review is on my blog.

I have two jobs -- the first is the necessity (consistent paycheck, benefits) at a health-related holding company. I was my boss's first hire so I'm special and got to move to LA and telecommute :-D My other is my passion: horses. I don't need it, but I've been riding for 20+ years so if I have a ch...

I'm a double spacer and I had to really work on getting that out of my daily typing. I'm sure there are places in my manuscript where I digressed and there are double spaces. My typing speed is about 90-95wpm and that double tap is so engrained in me, if I"m not conscious of it I'll put it in t...