Literary agent Nathan Bransford had a great post recently on finding your literary voice. This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot as I dig into another revision of my travel memoir. One of the elements I’m focusing on is my voice. Rachelle says my voice is still too journalistic, not memoir-y enough. I […]
Everyone agrees a writer’s voice — or lack thereof — can make or break a manuscript. But what is literary voice? And how do you improve something that’s so hard to define? Voice is one of those things you recognize when you see it. It’s what a reader refers to when she says, “I really […]
I know what you’re thinking: It’s an oxymoron. Novels are fiction. But when it comes to narrative nonfiction, the genre of my book, labels aren’t that simple. My travel memoir tells a true story, but it’s meant to read like a novel. That means I’ve got to work elements of fiction into my book, including […]
A big part of selling my book will be convincing both an agent and a publisher that it’s unique, different than travel memoirs already on bookstore shelves. So from the beginning, I’ve asked myself: What makes my book unique? Travelogues written by women voyaging alone have become so popular, they’re practically their own genre (Think: […]