Here at Dorrance, we publish a variety of books. Poetry books are quickly becoming a favorite of our staff to work with. The poetry books we publish are near and dear to authors’ hearts and cover a wide range of topics. Our authors use the beauty…
Based on everything we’ve been taught about writing, passive voice should be avoided at all costs. It takes away from the person delivering the action and instead emphasizes the action or the person receiving the action. It’s wordier and it’s one of…
We recently devoted a blog post to words that are commonly misspelled. This week, let’s look at ten commonly misused words. Let’s face it–the English language has a lot of nuances,…
Does the very mention of the word “poetry” take you back to high school English, tapping pentameter out on your desk, figuring out rhyme scheme and just scratching your head in confusion about how “The Red Wheelbarrow” by William…
There are three classes of people when it comes to semicolons: those afraid to use it because they don’t know how, those who use it incorrectly and without abandon, and the few–the proud–who use it exactly the way it was intended. The goal today…
We’ve all heard the spelling rule before…“I before E except after C.” It’s something that has been ingrained in our heads since we were in grade school, but we also know that this rule doesn’t even begin to apply to all of the IE/EI nuances in…
It was a dark and stormy night and the writer hunched over his computer, defeated. Even though he left no stone unturned, he was scared to death that his plot was missing a key element. But then he saw his first positive book review and lived…
At times, it can be pretty daunting to sit down at your computer and see a blank screen staring back at you. Whether you’re just starting your book, working on a pivotal scene, or are ready to write that last chapter, sometimes an empty canvas can…
Good stories grab us by the collar and pull us closer to the pages as we feverishly turn them to see what happens next. Every book is different. However, there are common components that help writers tell a good story. In today’s blog post,…
The dedication of your book is like an acceptance speech at an awards ceremony. It’s when you take the time to acknowledge the people who have helped you along the way, inspired you to write, or acted as your continual source of motivation as you…
