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JOIN US IN EXPLORING OTHERS' CRAFT AND BUILDING OUR OWN

A novel requires more than just one main plot. In this episode, we look at three major subplots in Buffalo Flats by Martine Leavitt, one that involves Rebecca’s family, one that involves her local community, and one that involves the larger community. We look at how Martine weaves in these subplots and how she makes […]

If you only give your readers one conflict after another without tension in between, you are in danger of exhausting, and maybe even boring them, to the point that they lose interest. Tension turns the page.

craft review by Anne-Marie Strohman Katherine Applegate’s novel-in-verse, Home of the Brave, is an intricate story. Kek, a ten-year-old refugee from Sudan, lands in Minnesota in the middle of winter and has to make sense of his new world. It is at once a story of leaving a life behind, engaging with a new world, […]