Every time I turn on the television or pick up a new book at the book store, I see yet another cliche or variation on a cliche, and I roll my eyes. “Again?” I say. “Geez! Is everybody these days so lacking in imagination, so devoid of creative talent, that they can’t come up with…
The First Fifty – Crucial – Pages of Your Book The first fifty pages of your book are crucial for setting the hook in your readers. Something has to happen. Something exciting, or intriguing, or you risk losing your reader’s interest. Limit Backstory – It’s always tempting in the beginning to fill the reader in…
Benefits and Drawbacks of Each POV in Your MS As a beginning writer who chose to write my first book in first-person narrative, I discovered the drawbacks of such an approach the hard way. Halfway through the book, I started all over in third-person – something I wouldn’t recommend. Briefly, Point of View – when…
Are You Overwhelming Your Readers? Have you ever run across a prologue like this: (usually in sci-fi books) Captain Briggs took the helm and began shouting orders. “Ensign, optimize the traspositional filtration valves to ignite the gravitational destabilizers.” “I can’t do that,” Ensign Scott replied. “If I optimize the filtration valve, the axomital diffusionators will…
Should I use sentence fragments in my book manuscript? Is this bad writing or style? Sentence fragments. Who cares? You? Me? Anyone? Depends. Writing nonfiction? Probably wouldn’t. Work, that is. Writing fiction? Could be. Depends. On what? Style. With some authors? Might work. Others? Not so much. A hundred years ago? Wouldn’t have been acceptable….
How Many Manuscript Drafts Should You Go Through? When working on a book of any kind, if you haven’t gone through a minimum of three drafts, you probably don’t have a finished product. The first draft should be seen only as an opportunity to articulate and develop ideas in a rough form. This tells you…
What’s the Best Way to Write a Book? There are as many answers to that questions as there are authors. And while no answer is inherently better than another, a few examples should serve to set the aspiring writer on a successful course to completing his or her first book. Obviously the answer also depends…
The Three S’s – Scene, Setting, and Senses Stories don’t occur in a bubble. They have to be set in a real and believable place. And what makes a scene or setting, is detail. And what makes the details, is work. Hard work. A lot of time and effort, in other words. Settings aren’t just…
You’ve Written “The End” – But Is Your Book Ready? Okay, so you’ve finally reached the magic words, The End. But is it really? Are you done? Have you really finished your book? Chances are, you haven’t. If you’ve only written the words The End, once or twice – if you’ve spent very little time…
This one’s a tough nut to crack. Avoiding cliches is like avoiding headaches. We’d all love to, but there’s no way we’ll ever completely avoid them. With hundreds of cliches, they’re as thick as pea soup, and therefore, often the first ideas which come to mind. Cliches are simply too ingrained into our patterns of…
Having trouble getting motivated to write? You’re not alone. Many writers struggle with keeping up the motivation. What you often need to keep up that motivation is keep a steady momentum with daily goals. As a writer, and (recovering) procrastinator, I’ve tried lots of ways to keep going with writing – but still often let…
Free Query Letter Template When you’ve spent a lot of time on your book and then you’re ready to submit to an agent, writing a query letter can seem as if it’s more difficult than the book itself. Most authors fret more about their literary agent query letter than their manuscript. With most queries…
