Should I give up writing? Last week, a woman in one of my many online writer groups asked us this. She’d written and self-published a historical novel that had gotten twenty or so good reviews, but a few months after its release, it wasn’t selling many copies. She was having trouble staying motivated to work on her next project, and
Category: Writing Inspiration.
Although this post is titled “How to Make a Book Trailer,” that might be a bit misleading, because I collaborated with a video editor. I’m going to go through the steps we took to create one, so whether you’re going to work with someone else or do it yourself, this might be helpful. And if you’ve been asking yourself, “How
Mystery story ideas often follow a similar pattern. Early on, a dead body turns up, a valuable item goes missing, or a puzzle begs to be solved. The reader knows that by the end of the book, questions will have been answered, which is a comforting element in even the most gruesome murder mysteries. This simple structure allows for
Hi, everyone! This is the last in a 7-part series about how to rewrite, revise, and edit a novel. I love editing a book, but many people find it overwhelming. However you approach it, the key is to break it down step by step. We’ve talked about clarifying your character arcs, fixing your pacing, increasing your story’s impact, fine-tuning speech and
Hey there! So far, this series has focused on shaping up your story and then getting it into the hands of beta readers. Once you’ve read over your beta reader feedback, and you’ve made any other changes to your book that you think will improve the story, it’s time to focus on your prose style. A “dialogue tag” is any
Welcome back to my 7-part series on how to rewrite, revise, and edit a novel! So far, we’ve been talking about ways to fix up the story, and the 2 segments after this will be more about polishing up your writing style. But before you get into sentence structure and word choice and so on, you need some feedback.
So far in my series about how to revise and edit your book, we’ve covered character arcs, pacing, and amplifying the strengths of your story. All three of these things can sometimes lead to big rewrites, though they don’t always. Now, we’re starting to get down to a more detailed level. This editing pass is all about making sure your