Q&A with Melanie Conklin

From my Q&A with Melanie Conklin, author of Every Missing Piece:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

I’m a fan of titles that have thematic relevance. I tend to settle on a title very early on in drafting, in fact well before I begin to draft at all. The original title for Every Missing Piece was All the Missing Pieces…we had to change the title because it was too similar to another book coming out in the same season, but even though that was a relatively small change, it took me a while to wrap my brain around it. That’s how central titles are to my work. I also title my chapters. Sometimes it’s just a word I want to explore. Other times, there’s a theme I want to infuse into the scenes. Sometimes I’m not right and I have to change the title, but in the end, the title needs to connect with the story both literally and thematically for me to be happy with it. Every Missing Piece is about a girl who’s trying to solve the mystery of a missing child while piecing her own life back together after...[read on]

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The Page 69 Test: Counting Thyme.

Writers Read: Melanie Conklin (May 2016).

Q&A with Melanie Conklin.

--Marshal Zeringue