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.
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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.
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Starting a book can be the most difficult part of the process. Many a new author will procrastinate and find all sorts of reason for not starting. At the end of the day though it is down to the individual to break down the barriers and get on with it. Here are a few tips for doing just that.
Leave a CommentEditing 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.
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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?
Leave a CommentHow To Write a Screenplay in 10 Days – Writing a film is something you don’t learn overnight. It requires a lot of effort and expertise in various fields such as creative writing, marketing and the ability to visually project something in your head. Nevertheless it can be learned.
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There are as many reasons to tell a fictionalized story as there are books in print or eBook. Do you think you have a story to tell? Take a look around the fiction shelves of a bookstore and note the others who felt similarly. Then determine your own reasons for telling your story and consider the below questions.
Leave a CommentWhen authors call me to inquire about publishing or marketing services for their books, they are often stumped by one of my questions. When I ask about the sales process for the book, the phone line goes silent. It is understandable.
1 CommentMost people tend to write an article and then submit it to a few top article directories. Then they may put it onto their blog. There are many other things that you can do with that article and here are a few tips on how to repurpose your article so that you can get the most out of it. In this way you will save a lot of time and make your content go a lot further.
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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?
Leave a CommentFollow the method in this article to analyze best-selling book titles and create your own quite different version of them. When you’ve done it right, you’ll have a resonance of success that people feel without knowing why that makes them want to explore your book and buy it.
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It’s a never-ending quest to find that one thing that everyone likes. Something that would appease any man, woman, or child the world over. Every single person is different though, and I doubt there is any one thing that every single person likes. When we write stories, we write them with the intent that every single person who reads it will love it.
Leave a CommentThese days it’s common knowledge that it’s hard to meet an agent or an editor through an unsolicited mailing. They are more likely to pay attention to a submission coming from someone they have met in person.
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One subject that comes up more than almost any other on writers’ forums, is how new writers go about finding a literary agent. Although there are many different routes to publication, it is through agents that publishing houses find the bulk of their new authors.
Leave a CommentErnest Hemingway said, “The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof shit-detector. This is the writer’s radar and all great writers have had it.” By this Hemingway signalled the vital importance of honesty and truth in creative writing – and these two are not easily found, least of all by the writer himself in the very act of writing.
Leave a CommentAs writers, we have to keep learning. It is fundamental to what we do for a living. Sometimes, we stumble onto something new and learn it on the fly. At other times, we choose a topic and settle down to learn it. In other words, we set a learning goal. The task may seem overwhelming at first, but like most things writers do, the process can be broken down into a manageable system. This one has six steps.
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Al Quaeda has been a gift to thriller novelists, with countless books being written on the topic since 2001. Before that it was the Cold War. What will the next ‘big theme’ be? China – the Chinese navy, China’s financial tentacles and industrial might – the author argues persuasively that this will be the next big theme for thriller writers.
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Have you ever experienced a time when you were so involved in something, you lost track of time? Have you ever been in what they call the “zone?” Are there other times you were exceptionally logical and analytical about what you are doing?
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Anyone with access to a word processor and the Internet can become a published author, but most do not become successful authors. We all know the publishing industry has changed drastically since the introduction of eReaders, but how many authors (traditional, self, or aspiring) truly understand the changes and how to navigate this new world?
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Enjoy the unusual quiet before publication because it has the sweetness of innocence before its lost, an anticipation before passion’s first demanding kiss. The curiosity and envy I saw in people’s eyes when I said I had a book coming out was a first clue.
Leave a CommentWords have the power to raise nations or toss them into dust. They have the power to uplift a person or hurtle them into the darkest pits of despair. They have the power to create success or failure. Use them wisely and your sales letter will transform into a page people will not only want to read but must read.
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Ever really wanted to quit a writing job halfway through but thought you couldn’t? Well you can. And sometimes it is the only option you have. So when and why should you give up, and should you ever feel guilty about it?
Leave a CommentNames are everywhere in a fantasy story and names are, ultimately an important part of the story. Unless you are writing some sort of comedic fantasy it is hard to take a take a sorcerer named Tim seriously. Which is why just such a name for just such a character is used in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
Leave a CommentMany businesses are jumping on the bandwagon to start their own blog. The problem many people have when they start a blog is they do not have any readers or followers. You may have a writing services company write your blog content or you are writing it yourself.
Leave a CommentConverting a book or report into Amazon’s lucrative Kindle format can be an exercise in frustration – or it can go smoothly with the right instructions. Follow these steps to get your book or report painlessly ready to sell in the Kindle store.
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Starting off the morning on the right foot is the #1 key to productivity. Check out this article here for to-the-point productivity tips for traveling freelance writers.
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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.
Leave a CommentThe key to saving yourself a whole lot of time is to learn a bit about formatting for Kindle before you start to write. Sure, you can go back and change the formatting but it can take hours, and you want to concentrate on writing the novel or short story, and not on reformatting. These tips apply if you have Word (and perhaps others like Open Office but I don’t know that for sure) and you can save the first of your two versions in doc or docx. More about that other version later.
Leave a CommentBefore you pick an idea from the many ideas demanding your attention, consider whether your premise/story has enough dramatic potential to sustain a 90-minute movie. You can do that – learn how.
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