I’ve heard it said several times by professionals that the final draft of your book should be at least 10% shorter than your first draft. This happens because you cut out the excess—both in scenes and in words. It may seem daunting, but, in my experience, it’s more tedious than Read more
As writers, we use foils all the time in our writing without realizing it. A foil is when you put opposites close together in order to make one stand out more. I’ve heard that the term comes from jewelers who placed a piece of foil under a gem to make Read more
I’ve covered the aspects and tips of writing book blurbs for readers, and now I want to give a little advice for composing synopses for editors and agents. These professionals will need more than just an emotional reaction to your story. If you’re trying to pitch to them for the Read more
As I mentioned last week, the point of the book blurb is to elicit an emotional reaction and make people want to read more. We already talked about the five main parts of a blurb, and this week I want to focus on tips to strengthen the reader’s emotional response. Read more
There are several ways to get people to read your book. The title, cover art, and book reviews quotes are just a few ways to hook the readers. One of the best ways to get them to open the book is the blurb you put on the back cover. These Read more
If you’ve heard it before, you’re going to keep hearing it. Conflict makes a good story. But it can’t just be a simple problem. It should start as something wrong and snowball into a catastrophe by the climax of the story. You do this by broadening and deepening the conflict Read more
There’s a theory that storytellers hypnotize their readers by the power of suggestion. I’ve never studied hypnosis, but I see the similarities and have put it on my list of topics to research further. In this post, we are going over the five levels of brain waves and one way Read more
When you write a scene in your story, it can be hard to balance the description with the action. The readers need to be able to picture the setting and characters, but too much description can make the story feel like it isn’t moving forward. There is a three step Read more
This week I’ve learned some insider information about publishing houses: the hierarchy of authors and how to climb it. There seems to be six levels of authors in a publishing house: newbie, proven, midlist, lead, super lead, and apex. Let’s take a closer look at each. 1. Newbie Author A Read more
Every writer wants to have engaging characters that hook the readers. In this post, I’m going to talk about three elements that can create a character that readers want to get behind. These are proactivity, competence, and sympathy. All three elements should be treated like sliders instead of an on/off Read more