Nathan Bransford

If you're looking to jumpstart a creative project in 2024, I compiled some advice for various stages of the process:

Tips to get your creativity on track It has come to my attention that we have entered the year 2024. I’m a bit bleary-eyed myself as I was up late last night finishing a messy first draft of a new middle grade novel, and much of my New Years’ planning has been put on hold. As you probably know if you frequent […]

This year in books! 2023 marked a significant year of transition. What exactly we're transitioning to feels very uncertain.

This Year in Books (2023) This year! Books! When we look back, I think we’ll see 2023 as a significant year of transition for the publishing industry. And yet what we’re transitioning to feels murkier to predict than at any time I’ve been involved in the business. The year is full of several different potentially massi...

Specificity: not just for query letters!

Specificity matters in opening pages too (page critique) If you’d like to nominate your own page or query for a public critique, kindly post them here in our discussion forums: Also: I’M LOW ON QUERIES TO EDIT. If you post your query in the query critique forum, there’s a good chance I’ll edit it in the coming weeks. If you’d like to test you...

Some of my favorite posts, books, music, and more from 2023!

The best of 2023 As the year winds down, I thought I’d do something lighter and compile some best-ofs for your holiday enjoyment! On Thursday we’ll have a critique as usual, and Friday will be the last post of the year, with some reflections on the year in books. Thank you so much to everyone for reading and com...

Engine of capitalism in human form Taylor Swift is breaking book records too, Goodreads review-bombing fallout, the best book covers of 2023, and more of the best writing and books links from the past week!

Taylor Swift breaks Little Golden Books records too (This week in books) This week! Books! Engine of capitalism in human form Taylor Swift does not just have a multi-billion dollar concert series under her belt, she is also the subject of the highest selling Little Golden Book in the imprint’s 81-year history, which recently surpassed one million copies sold. Last week...

Time for my 17th annual poll! Will you ever buy mostly e-books? Do you already? Click through to vote!

Will you ever buy mostly e-books? (17th annual poll) I first launched this poll in 2007, when Amazon’s first Kindle had just been released and iPads didn’t even exist yet. Now we have gadgets and gizmos aplenty, though paper has held on strong. It’s been interesting through the years to get the pulse of e-book optimism and pessimism. My usual ca...

The award for drama goes to the National Book Awards, what happened at the 92nd Street Y, what's in store for the future of publishing, the tension between art and politics, and more of the best writing and books links from the past week!

The award for drama goes to the National Book Awards (This week in books) This week! Books! The blog will be dark next week as I celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday, and I hope all who are celebrating have a happy and healthy (well… sort of healthy) time. If all goes to plan I’ll be back the week of November 27. Where to start with the National Book Awards? Well. […]

Sometimes it's necessary to step away from writing. Gut check the decision to make sure you aren't bowing to outside voices, but also trust that writing will still be there when you need it.

Writing will be there when you need it At some point in your journey, you’re probably going to need to take a break from writing. You might even want to take a break from it. And virtually everyone I know who takes a step back from writing feels a whole lot of guilt. There’s an immense sunk cost to building a writing career, […]

Updated and expanded my post on how to choose between traditional vs. self-publishing. Both are viable! It really comes down to what's important to you.

Traditional publishing vs. self-publishing. Which should you choose? Should you just go ahead and self-publish your book and see how it does? Should you try your luck with agents and publishers? Here's how to decide.

Amazon sues self-publishing scammers, Erin Bowman on your protagonist needing to be wrong, Brandy Jensen on repairing friendships, and more of the best writing and books links from the past week!

Amazon sues a bunch of scammers (This week in books) This week! Books! It’s been quite a busy week over at Nathan Bransford Books LLC, and today I’m at my favorite place The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens taking a two-day class on Maritime History From Below (as one does). As a result, I need to shake things up a bit and lis...

Every book I’ve ever started writing has felt like something I could scarcely imagine finishing. And when I reach the finish line, I’m just as confused as ever about how I ever got there.

Every novel feels like an impossibly tall mountain I’m in the homestretch of finishing a new middle grade novel, which will mark the sixth novel I’ve written, in addition to two nonfiction guides. With nearly eight books under my belt (five of which are published), one would think I just crank them out now. I don’t. And here’s something that...

Area billionaire sinks social network in just a year, Scholastic apologizes but doesn't specify how they'll reintegrate their book fair, the most interesting statistic in publishing, and more of the best writing and books links from the past week!

Musk sinks Twitter in just a year (This week in books) This week! Books! I’ll never forget it. When I was on vacation in Hawaii in the late 2000s, I checked my email and it was nothing but “new follower” notifications from Twitter. Sandwiched in between hundreds of these alerts was a congratulations. I’d made Twitter’s inaugural “Who to foll...

Here's an example of a really good nonfiction query letter.

A very good nonfiction query (query critique) If you’d like to nominate your own page or query for a public critique, kindly post them here in the discussion forums: Also, if you’d like to test your editing chops, keep your eye on this area or this area! I’ll post the pages and queries a few days before a critique so you can see how yo...

Writing advice tends to be most useful before and after you do the actual writing part. At some point you just have to write.

Just write During the pandemic, lots of writers used the extra time to write, to take writing classes, to read writing guides, and to engage with writing communities. While on the whole this has been an excellent case of turning Covid lemons into novel lemonades, in my work with authors I am also seeing quite....

Scholastic's segregated book fair, Aaliyah Bilal's rise from unagented author to National Book Award nominee, Drew Barrymore is out and LeVar Burton is in, and more of the best writing and books links from the past week!

Was the publishing industry really serious about diversity? (This week in books) This week! Books! First up, I don’t mean to paint an entire industry with too broad of a brush and there have certainly been pockets of commitment to reversing a checkered legacy of hiring and publishing patterns within the book business. But one of the looming questions was whether the publishing...

Don't disorient the reader by "head hopping" when you're trying to write an omniscient POV. Here are some tips for shifting between different characters in omniscient, as demonstrated by two masters, Min Jin Lee and Barry Unsworth:

How to bridge characters' thoughts in an omniscient POV Perspective is a foundational storytelling building block in novels. Having a consistent perspective in your novel is absolutely crucial, but many beginning writers don’t give sufficient thought to the perspective they choose and its strengths and limitations. This is particularly important if you...

"Literary fiction" as a genre is younger and deader than one might think, how to write fantasy without colonialist tropes, Kate McKean on comps as sales + vibes, Michael Lewis's curious blind spots, and more of the best writing and books links from the past week!

Is literary fiction dead as a genre? (This week in books) Like many people I am aghast at the recent events in Israel and Gaza and my heart is with everyone affected. In a social media environment where people now feel pressed to make their own statements as if we all have our own personal PR departments and where silence is viewed by some as complicity, [...

If you write your novel like it's a glorified screenplay, you probably aren't even approximating a cinematic experience, let alone taking advantage the full capabilities of novels as an art form.

Your novel is not a screenplay One of my favorite jokes on The Office is when Dwight Schrute boasts, “I know everything about film. I’ve seen over 240 of them.” It’s funny because it sounds reasonable at first, but then you realize 240 is a pittance. You’ve surely seen thousands of movies, not to mention thousands of h...

How publishing has changed from the invention of fantasy to BookTok, against moral stridency in responses to speech, Drew Barrymore needs new writers to explain to her what "you reap what you sow" means, and more of the best writing and books links from the past week!

How publishing has changed in the past fifty years (This week in books) This week! Books! First up, please stick with me past a housekeeping matter because there’s some analysis about the last fifty years in publishing that I want to make sure you see. Housekeeping: Elon Musk’s ongoing demolition of Twitter reached yet another low this week as he removed headlines f...

You probably didn't have fun writing your query letter. Make sure it reads like you had fun anyway.

Your query should read like you had fun writing it Chances are you absolutely, positively did not enjoy writing your query letter. Writing a query is among the things writers hate the most about their profession, up there with paper cuts and no host open bars. But once you’ve scarred your soul whittling down your wondrously complicated creation in...

A big victory for the WGA, Hannah Natanson profiles a book banning zealot, Jasmine Liu on the right-wing war on books, and more of the best writing and books links from the past week!

WGA conquers the studios (This week in books) This week! Books! In a huge victory for writers, the leaders of Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers reached a deal to end the strike and send a contract to members for ratification. Studios misjudged writers’ willingness to stick together through a ...

A character under stress should act like it. It's helpful (and fun! and human!) to let their emotions spill out in unpredictable ways. Don't let a good conflict go to waste.

Let characters' emotions spill in unpredictable ways One of the strangest things about writing fiction is that it often needs to make more sense than real life. In real life, people fall into grief-stricken states of paralysis, wander around aimlessly without knowing what they’re looking for, and endlessly endure unpleasantness without trying to cha...

Drew Barrymore summons her astute humility and finds a resolve, a judge smacks down Texas' idiotic book law, another author/OpenAI lawsuit, and more of the best writing and books links from the past week!

Drew Barrymore finds a resolve for her scab controversy (This week in books) This week! Books! After first releasing a now-deleted defense of bringing her eponymous show back despite an ongoing writers strike, Drew Barrymore summoned every bit of astute humility she possessed and found the hoped for resolve by pausing her talk show until the strike is over. And about that st...

Be careful summarizing abstractly across multiple scenes. It’s often better to dramatize a single, representative scene that pushes the story forward.

Beware summarizing across scenes Learning to effectively manipulate time is one of the important skills novelists and memoirists must master. You can brush past centuries or linger for pages on a split second depending on what the story requires. Crafting effective connective tissue and making sure you have the correct events drama...

Drew Barrymore disinvited from the National Book Awards, Merve Emre on what it means to be a critic, the future of KKR's S&S acquisition, and more of the best writing and books links from the past week!

Drew Barrymore disinvited from National Book Awards (This week in books) This week! Books! Actress and (as I only learned this week) talk show host Drew Barrymore sparked an immense amount of controversy this week as she announced the return of her show The Drew Barrymore Show without union writers, who are on an ongoing months-long strike. Writers including Colson White...

Training scenes are among the most memorable in movies. In novels they (usually) suck. The reasons why reveal a lot about the differences between storytelling for cinema and books:

Training scenes work in movies. They (usually) suck in novels Some of the most beloved scenes in movie history involve training for combat. Obi-Wan Kenobi making Luke put the blast shield down so he can train blind with his lightsaber in Star Wars: A New Hope. Morpheus and Neo fighting an epic, beautiful, mesmerizing joust after Neo learns kung fu in The Matri...

Beware of fraudsters posing as literary agents, John Green fights book banners, Min Jin Lee on omniscient voice and what it means to write, Grace Lin on translating an idea to a finished PB, and more of the best writing and books links from the past week!

Beware of literary agency fraud (This week in books) This week! Books! Book scammers continue to prey on unsuspecting authors, and one of the latest versions involves people impersonating real literary agents, sending fraudulent contracts, and then asking for money. These scams have been around for a while, but seem to be reaching new levels of sophis...

If you are writing a book with the expectation of material riches, might I suggest drilling for oil instead? If you are writing a book because you love writing books, there's never been a better time to be a writer.

It's harder than ever to rise above the noise. It's also a golden era for writers After not changing terribly much from the early 2000s to the pandemic in 2020, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the traditional publishing industry has lurched into a new era. Things that were once unthinkable have become the new normal. Remote work! Agents struggling to get their projects ev...

The more a character puts in a bucket, the more there is to spill. The best way to show a piercing betrayal or a legendary romance isn't by making everything easy, it's by making everything as difficult for your characters as possible.

The more a character puts in a bucket, the more there is to spill Writers are often told that they need to raise the stakes, crystalize the stakes, sharpen the stakes, stakes stakes stakes. In fact, we hear it so much I worry sometimes writers think it means that unless literally saving the world is at stake in their novel, they don’t have the right stakes to pu...

Updated my post on over-explaining default objects and gestures. Word count matters a lot these days, and bloated novels often end up that way due to redundancies and unnecessary details.

Don't over-explain default objects and gestures When novels are bloated with an excessive word count, the extra words are often where you’d least expect them. In fact, when I’m editing, I often find that very long novels are among the most tightly plotted. The authors know the word count is a problem, so they trim all the extra scenes and str...