Yesterday, I attended an incredible writing event hosted by Jericho Writers. It was a fantastic day, with talks from amazing writers, authors and agents. I just need to state that I would 100% attend one of their events again, and recommend them to other writers hoping to gain huge insight into writing, getting an agent and publishing.

So, I thought I’d share with you all some of the writing lessons I took away from the day. Next week I’ll share some of the publishing lessons too, but I think it’ll be too much if I try and fit everything into one blog post, so here we go!

1. Speech is one of the most powerful character traits
The first talk of the day was about ‘advanced characterisation’ and spoke about the various ways we can portray our characters to ensure they have depth. ‘Speech’ was discussed for a while…

By Scott Lorenz

Westwind Communications

“Do book awards matter?” YES!!

As a book publicist, I can assure you they absolutely do matter! One client won several awards and was contacted by two movie producers about her Young Adult Sci-Fi Fantasy Fiction novel. Another one of my clients won the prestigious Los Angeles Book Festival award. That then led to a flurry of media interest, which subsequently led to a major New York agent deciding to represent the book and pitch it to all the major publishing houses. This author, needless to say, was happy he decided to enter.

You win awards you sell more products.Jeff Bezos, CEO Amazon

Jeff Bezos at the 2016 Code Conference (Photo news.techniblogic.com

Not long ago, a business book client won a major award which caused CNN to reach out to request the book.

Most recently a major childrens’ TV show contacted me and asked…

by Nillu Nasser Stelter

Like many of you, I’ve been a keen reader since childhood. Reading was an escape when my loving, boisterous family overwhelmed me, when the world was quiet and friends slept, and the television pixels seemed to zap energy rather than give it. I started with Roald Dahl, Enid Blyton, and Judy Blume and was hooked from there.

on Jami Gold site:

Last week, news of the #CopyPasteCris plagiarism scandal hit the writing world (52 books, 34 authors, 3 articles, 3 websites, 2 recipes and counting).

As I mentioned last time, two topics beyond the extreme plagiarism have gained attention:

Continue reading HERE

If the thought of writing a novel freaks you out, first, know you’re not alone. Second, this seemingly huge task is not as overwhelming as you think it is.

Sure, you have to come up with characters, plot lines, unique ideas, master show, don’t tell, and learn how to use commas properly. And it could take months or even years to write all the words you’ll need to tell the story, but it can be done. How? By writing scene-by-scene.

Breaking your novel into smaller sections of work is Productivity 101 and will allow you to concentrate on just one specific scene and not think about what else you have to do to get your book written. That’s my first tip for a great scene. For the rest, keep reading…

Writing Tips For Great Scenes

Know What Kind Of Scene It Needs To Be

As a general rule:

• The…

Everyone knows that to become a better writer, you need to write more. Practicing the craft does exactly that; allows you to hone your skills of putting words in the right order, building scenes and shaping characters.

The more you write, the better you get at it. But better writing isn’t the only skill that a writer needs. You also need to grow as a writer, so that each book you do write is an improvement over the last, and here are four ways that you can do that.

Learn To Take Criticism

Unless a reviewer or commenter is attacking you personally (in which case they are the one with the problem), criticism of your writing isn’t personal. It’s an opinion, just like the opinions that you yourself form when you read books by others.

Opinions aren’t something that you have to agree with and can be great teachers if…

Words. You can’t be a writer without them. We use them to convey our thoughts and feelings, to create worlds and the characters living in them. Words give us our voice, but they can also muddle it.

Just because you can write using all the words doesn’t mean that you should.

Being too wordy can actually be a bad thing. It weakens sentences and takes the impact out of our paragraphs. This potentially stops something good from being great.

By removing unnecessary words, you’re left with strong, clear prose.

But some of these words add depth and character, you might argue. Yes, they do. In the right sentence, in the right paragraph, at the right point in the story. Any other time it’s likely to be cluttering up your sentences.

This isn’t a complete checklist. Just as we all have our own personal Repeats list, you may wish…

So you’ve done it! Created your characters, planned a world, plotted a story, and turned them into a whole book.

It was hard. It took years. It filled your soul, and it stretched your sanity. It was one of the best things you’ve ever done and one of the worst—or so you thought.

As many writers discover after completing their book, they need to write a synopsis; a process that feels harder than typing “The End” on a 100,000-word manuscript.

Why? Because condensing those characters, world, story, and years of carefully crafted sentences into a one-page summary is damn hard. Like writing a book, however, you can do it, all you need is a little help from these do’s and don’ts…

Do’s

Do Give Yourself Options

A one-page version is usually standard, but some publishers/agents do request a two-page option so it’s a good idea to write both. While…