The BPS Books Blog

An earlier blog responded to a reader’s request for tips on writing an acknowledgment page. In follow-up to that, here is a good example of an acknowledgments page from a book BPS Books recently published, Finding Matthew: A Child with Brain Damage, a Young Man with Mental Illness, a Son and Brother with Extraordinary Spirit by Donna…

A reader of this blog has asked for advice in writing a dedication to a book. As you will see below, dedications vary a great deal in content, length, and style. Nowadays, most dedications are short. About the only advice I would give is not to use “Dedication” as a title on the dedication page, or…

Recently one of our blog readers posed a question about writing the acknowledgments section of her book. In response, here are five pointers that may help authors get to grips with their own acknowledgments section. If you have any other questions on this topic drop us a line in the comments. 1. Acknowledgment pages are…

Some writers absorb the books they read into their own craft. It is instinctive and subconscious on their part. As gifted artists, they take the given into the workings of their own creativity. They are not fully aware of how books are put together or at least cannot verbalize their knowledge. Other writers are keenly…

I have worked on so many non-fiction books that I sometimes feel like a family doctor who has cared for so many patients he can diagnose a problem almost before it hoists itself up onto his examining table. Here are seven problems that I often encounter as I read manuscripts. The manuscript is just not…

“Easy reading is damn hard writing.” We had Christmas late this year – a few weeks into January – because right around Christmastime two of our children flew off to London, England, and two to Winnipeg, and then my wife and I also visited London. And so it came to pass that I received from…

I sometimes advise authors to write their own blurb about their book in progress, to see if that helps them focus on what I call their book’s premise and promise, whence they can build a clearer structure overall. (This also helps them, and me, to come up with a description of the book for my own…

In my last post I mentioned that two of the best ways to improve your writing skills are to study good books (more on that in my next post), and to read books that discuss writing. I shared some inspiring quotes from the The Paris Review Interviews, a collection of conversations with some of the world’s foremost writers.…

If you would like to hone your writing skills but lack the funds or time to get a bachelor’s or master’s degree in creative writing, you can “correct” for this by attending writers conferences or workshops. Even less expensive and more convenient are the two methods I describe below. They’re cheap because you can do…

Fiction writers are often anxious that their readers will not see what they want them to see. This anxiety can be creative, but it can also be destructive: It can cause them to actually block readers from seeing what they’re describing. One way writers do this is by avoiding the perfectly good and simple dialogue tags of he…

“Bastian, you buried your lede again.” That’s what Max Crittenden, the chief copyeditor of the Catholic Register, sometimes told me when editing my first news articles for that paper, way back in the late 1970s. Max, an Australian who had made his name as an editor on Fleet Street in London and on the major dailies…

My wife and I like to watch Law and Order reruns together. Okay, that may be using the word “together” a little loosely. And the word “like,” too. June rarely makes it to the screen for the very beginning of the program. “You’re going to miss the premise,” I cry out in editorial anxiety. Of…