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…
Engage Your Characters in Their Setting When you’re characters interact through dialogue, make them interact as well with their surroundings. There should be a continual interplay of character and setting. Examine your dialogue sections to ensure they don’t just take place in a vacuum. What are your characters holding in their hands? If they’re not…
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…
