A list of commonly used adverbs: Moms Who Think (http://www.momswhothink.com/reading/list-of-adverbs.html)

And while you’re there, slip over to the list of verbs, also located on that site and linked to the aforementioned page.

Also, under the “useful links” category in the navigation column, you’ll find a recently added “Creating a Pitch” which was written by the novelist Camy Tang. Definitely worth reading and even bookmarking for future reference.

Yesterday various agents and editors got together on Twitter and posted a wild rash of reasons they will reject a query letter.  If you haven’t read the 140 or less character tweets we collected, now would be a really good time.

How do you write a winning query letter that won’t be labeled “fail” by these editors, agents and interns working in publishing houses?  We’ve collected a few really good articles that will help you get your foot in the door.  Take a gander: (hint: click the links as they’ll take you directly to the article we’re referencing.)

• Mystery author, S. W. Hubbard, has a great article here: www.swhubbard.com
• Ester Heller, Editor-in-Chief, Targum Press posted the following guidelines Nov. 2008: http://blogs.targum.com
• A summation of yesterday’s #queryfail experiment and lessons learned can be found here at the Belletrinsic blog: http://belletrinsic.blogspot.com
• Tara Lazar did a summation, too, that’s worth perusing and can be found here: http://taralazar.blogspot.com
• Colleen Lindsay, the literary agent (FinePrint Literary Management) responsible for yesterday’s #queryfail, has a site crammed full of useful information to pick through.  Start here: http://theswivet.blogspot.com and be sure to look around the site, it’s very useful!
• Jill Corcoran has a very well put together “how to write a query letter” post that’s very timely, too, as it was published on March 1st, 2009: http://jillcorcoran.blogspot.com Be sure to check out the posts she links to as well (run your cursor over the page to find the links which aren’t underlined).  Bookmark the post as it is a great resource!

Still need more?  Want a template of sorts?  Short of sending out the monkeys to write it for you (and no, we won’t do that — didn’t you read yesterday’s capture of the #queryfail tweets?), Nathan Bransford with Curtis Brown LTD provides you with a great “Mad Lib” style query letter.  Just be sure to change it up a bit so it’s more personalized!  Go check it out at: http://nathanbransford.blogspot.com/2008/03/query-letter-mad-lib.html

If you have your own tips, winning recipe, experience to share, by all means, leave a comment!  Good luck, too!

• Writing Dialect: It’s in the Rhythm by Cameron Michaels
• How to Avoid Writing Dialect in Plays
• Dialect Survey Maps – A collection of maps showing the regional variations in terms and pronunciations in the US.
• Writing Dialect in Fiction by Tony Burton – Contains several examples from classic literature.
• Using Dialect in Fiction by Jennifer Jensen – Another discussion of use of dialect.
• Writing Accents and Dialects by Charles Carson – Includes some caution that how you write accents and dialects may say more about you than about the characters.
• Write stuff: Avoid using dialect, phonetic spelling by Rusty Lang – Advice on using dialect and phonetic spelling in journalistic writing.
• The International Dialects of English Archive – "IDEA was created in 1997 as a free, online library of primary source recordings for the performing arts." Includes transcripts of the audio samples. Note: Each audio sample begins with the person reading a passage. You may want to skip past this to the unscripted speech.
• Internet Archive – Contains many freely available movies and audio recordings. May require some digging to find the dialect you’re looking for.
• radio-locator and Web-Radio – Search for radio stations; results will show you which ones you can listen to over the Internet. Both include search by state.

Give it a try and make it a mainstay at SixSentences.BlogSpot.com