Flashes of War, by Katey Schultz

Sadly, there’s a lot to write about war in recent years, and there’s sameness to much of what’s written about it, whether fiction of non-fiction. The horror of combat, in which one’s mortality is constantly at the fore. The comradeship between combatants, something hopelessly misunderstood by most readers. And the alienation of combatants upon their return home, home a reality that doesn’t seem as real as that within a war theater.

Katey Schultz writes of these tropes, but she does it with deep insights into the humanity of those involved. Her stories here are set in Afghanistan, Iraq, or “back in the world” today’s soldiers left to fight its generation’s war. Never one-sided, her stories are sketches of these people, the American combatants, the Iraqi and Afghani civilians, the families back home in the U.S., all of whom cope with the trials of trying to…

by Kelsie Engen

Today we’re going to talk about how to approach the next revision step: developmental edits. Basically this means addressing the major, structural issues of your WIP before moving on to the minor things.

This step comes after you’ve read your first draft, made some comments or jotted down ideas.

Of course, whether you’ve merely jotted down ideas, or come up with new pacing suggestions, or discovered some character motivations, etc., at this point you should create a new outline.