Our Spun Yarn Blog:
The Bobbin
3 Times You Ignore Reader Feedback at Your Peril
Before we start to curate an author's Spun Yarn Manuscript Report, we ask how far along they think they are in the editing process, on a scale of 1 - 10. The average score over a hundred manuscripts? 7.3. We also track every manuscript's scores from readers, who are comparing the manuscript they've just to other well-known books in the genre. The average overall score? 6 / 10. There's a gap here. It's grayish, smudgy around the edges, and rrrrrreally annoying to authors.
Cure Writer's Block With These 25 Personal Questions
The best way to beat writer’s block is to keep writing, and the best way to continue your practice of writing is to write on a subject you know inside and out. That subject is YOU! Writing about yourself or your experiences is a great way to continue your writing habit with an aim toward curing that writer’s block. Below, you’ll find 25 personal questions to use as writing prompts.
Overcome Writer's Block With These 7 Situational Writer Prompts
To keep you writing and to get those creative juices flowing again, here are 7 situational writing prompts to help you break writer’s block so you can get back to your normal self: a writer brimming with creativity!
7 Holiday Gifts Writers Actually Need
It’s that time of year again! Time to stress over what to give the writer you’ve already given a zillion writing mugs, notebooks, and tee shirts over the years. This creative list of holiday gifts for writers will score you some major points.
Announcing the 2018 Spun Yarn Readers' Choice Award Winner!
We can hardly believe that we've curated more than 60 manuscript reports here at The Spun Yarn! To celebrate, we'd like to award a standout manuscript with the first annual Spun Yarn Readers' Choice Award.
Reader Spotlight: Stephen the fantasy loving hiker and his business savvy alter ego
In this Reader Spotlight post, meet Stephen, a prolific writer, voracious reader of Action, Fantasy, and Young Adult manuscripts for The Spun Yarn, and a frequent traveler. When he’s not teaching business courses at the local community college, Stephen and his wife visit friends all over the country in between hiking trips.
The Moment that Matters in Novel Writing
Our co-founder Sean Hewens talks about “moments that matter” in writing: that one hour of feedback after so much time alone with your manuscript.
Books We Love: Keeping You a Secret
In this post, we continue a series of personal essays about books with LGBTQ+ themes and/or characters that change readers' lives. Keeping You a Secret by Julie Anne Peters helped author Tiffany Clampet deal with the hatred she encountered when she decided to come out, and has likely helped thousands of other readers as well.
How Writing and Submitting Short Stories Improved My Novel
Spun Yarn author Art Klepchukov takes a side in the writer’s battle to decide: work on one project at a time, or allow your creative instincts to take you in several directions? Art makes a convincing argument for why writing and submitting short stories as you work on The Novel is actually a win-win situation.
How Anne Frank's Sexuality Helped Me Accept My Own: Books We Love for #PrideMonth
In this series, The Spun Yarn honors #PrideMonth with a series of personal essays about books with LGBT themes and/or characters that change readers' lives. What better way to start than with Anne Frank's classic Diary, viewed from a perspective that history tends to ignore?
Reader Spotlight: Haeli the Teenaged World Traveler
In this Reader Spotlight post meet Haeli, one of our best Young Adult readers. As a worldschooler who travels the world with her family, Haeli brings a unique perspective to the manuscripts she reads for The Spun Yarn.
Tie it Up: Beta Reader Comments on Your Ending
Ending are the hardest, but we’ve got four common sense tips for tying your story up perfectly. Don’t take our word for it, these learnings come from hundreds of beta readers.
Decoding Beta Reader Comments on Protagonists
In our third installment of the Decoding series, learn what beta readers might say about your protagonist, and what that means for your next revision.
Flash Feedback: 5 Ways to Evaluate Your Novel's Pacing
Are your beta readers making myriad small comments, losing the big picture of your story? Here are 5 things we’ve learned from using Flash Feedback as a failsafe way to evaluate your novel’s pacing.
Decoding Beta Reader Comments on Secondary Characters
At The Spun Yarn, we've analyzed more than 120 full reads' worth of comments on 40 manuscripts, and we like to think of ourselves as beta reader decoders. In this post, we cover beta reader comments on Secondary Characters. 5 comments about secondary characters and what they mean for your revision.
5 Things I've Learned From my Novel Feedback
5 Things I Learned From my Novel Feedback. It’s the next step toward getting your book published, but it takes courage and know-how about what to do with your novel feedback. Here’s what I learned about how to make the most of my Spun Yarn Feedback.