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:

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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…

on The Book Designer:

One of the most common posts in the self-publishing and book marketing group I co-moderate on Facebook is some variation of this:

“I just wrote my first book and I’m so excited! What do I need to do now to get it published? Can anyone tell me? I really want this to be a best-seller!”

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