All Entries Tagged With: "writing"

Pseudonyms: 10 Questions to Ask Before Choosing a Pen Name

Pseudonyms abound in writing circles. What doesn’t abound is clear and insightful advice on how to choose the best pen name for a long-term career in novel writing.

Let’s have some fun. Check out the names of these genre fiction authors: Robin Hobb, Stephen King, Jack Higgins, Rebecca Brandewyne, Issac Asimov, Barbara Michaels, Alistair MacLean, Eboni Snoe…

Studying Your Favorite Author Can Help You Write Your Book

One thing that is extremely helpful to authors as they are writing their book is market research. You may have heard this term used as it relates to consumer research for marketing services and products, but it is also a very relevant practice for writers, too!

Fiction Writing – How To Keep Readers Turning Pages

You’ve arranged your writing area, you go there every day and churn out x number of words on the story you have set out to tell. Kudos. But along with writing your dream, there are techniques that make a story sizzle and lack of those techniques that make it fall flat.

Rejection Letters – Learn From Your Mistakes and Become a Better Writer

As a writer, it is almost a given that your dream is for someone to notice your talents, realise your natural flair for words, and agree that your work is worthy of gracing the shelves of bookstores worldwide. Before you achieve that dream however, you have to let publishers know you’re out there. And that means writing letters, which in turn, if you’re lucky, means receiving replies to those letters. And more often than not those replies will be rejection letters.

Writing Tip: Read This Out Loud

Editing is a bore. It’s a pain. It’s far too easy to gloss over what we’ve written (it’s not like we don’t know the ending) without really taking it in. How many novels and other works have you, dear reader, come across with wonky sentence phrasings and obvious wrong words? If they’d taken this first tip, perhaps it wouldn’t have happened. Here’s the Tip: Read what you’ve written out loud.

How to Successfully Write the Plot of Your Story in Reverse

How can one write a good fiction story in reverse? This may seem a trick question until you realise this simple fact: a novel is defined by its outcome. Put it in another way; every story has a Controlling Idea; and this idea is embedded in the final climax of the story. You cannot know what you are really trying to say until you have your Controlling Idea. And the corollary of that is: you cannot find out what you are trying to say until you have written your story. So what do you do?

You Gotta Want It Badly – 8 Ways to Actually Write

No matter how much we want and love to write, unless we’re terribly disciplined or have deadlines (or an editor/agent looming over us), our default activity is not writing. In other words, if we have a spare minute, a break between activities, the rare gift of an unplanned hour, do we write? Or do we fill it in with stuff that “needs to be done”? Or take a much-needed nap? Or call a girlfriend and relax? Or make plans for dinner?

The Importance of Rewriting Your Manuscript: Revision Is Re-Seeing

Good writing takes hard work, and despite all the talk about how good writing takes inspiration, much more of it is perspiration. An author who does not revise his or her work extensively settles for a mediocre project and has not yet seen the possibilities of what the work could be. Here are some tips for rewriting to create a quality product.

3 Steps To The Perfect Query

Misconceptions abound about what a real query should be. The agents and editors I know don’t want to be ‘wowed.’ Nor do they want to be bored to tears

Time Management and Writing – 5 Tips On How To Make Enough Time To Finish Your Writing Project Now

Time Management when you are writing can mean the difference between accomplishing your writing goals and working forever on a writing project and never getting it finished. Read on to find 5 tips for making the time you need to finish your writing project now.

The Unfinished Dictionary

The dictionary tries to keep track of the English language, but it can’t. We all love a new word, acronym or slang – and who cares if it isn’t right. But even if it isn’t right, it can still qualify for the dictionary.

Good Writing Results in Word-Of-Mouth Marketing

Authors too often focus on writing their books without giving any thought to marketing the book until after it is completed. However, marketing is integral for the book’s success, and writing the book is itself a part of marketing since the book’s content assumes a certain purpose and audience. Thinking about the marketing of the book before and as it is written will put authors ahead of the game once the book is completed

Symbolism and Names in Harry Potter Books

I’ll admit to a teensy weeny smidgen of envy towards J K Rowling. No – not the massive fame and fortune side of things. I envy her ability to conjure up a person’s character with a name: Hasn’t she just nailed it? Take Harry for starters:

Writing and Motivation

Writing and motivation can easily wane but if you wish to increase your motivation and sense of drive and get published…