In my last blog, I tried to define story as: “ …a tale about a character or characters, set in a particular environment or time, who struggle to deal with an important problem or opportunity that comes into their live(s) and which sets in motion a sequence of events and actions that logically lead to …
Continue reading Theme – the magic ingredient within a story
Recently, I purchased “Story trumps structure”, by Steven James. I was attracted to the book by its provocative title and the foreward by Donald Maass, who I much admire. Although the book is mostly a manifesto for organic writing (‘pantsing’), as opposed to plotting and outlining, it is still an excellent read for all types …
Amazing practical advice for potential new indie authors from Knite Writes. So true. Just had to reblog this
In my last blog, I said I was taking some time out from writing as I needed to think more deeply about where the plot-line of my new novel was taking me. After a short break, I looked again at the manuscript, which was about a third complete, and my scene cards. In spite of …
I love to read science fiction. When I’m not writing myself I can usually be found reading — a sci-fi novel, or if not sci-fi, a book about the craft of writing. Recently, I realised I needed to take a break from writing my new novel. I had reached a point where I needed to …
Whether you’re a self published indie author or a traditionally published author, your readers will judge you by the quality of your writing. Not only must you produce an amazing story, with characters that connect emotionally with you readers, but the finished product must be professionally finished and error free (or virtually error free). For …
For me, one of the most difficult aspects of writing is finding the story. Finding ideas is no problem: everyone has ideas. How many times have you been told that by someone that he or she has a great idea for a book? But an idea alone does not make a story. It’s the next …
This is a wonderful article about writing from Patti Moed. I just had to re-blog it.
In a recent blog, ‘Indie Publishing on a Shoestring’, I wrote about how you can use Scrivener to create mobi, epub, and pdf files for publishing on Amazon, Createspace, and other e-distributors, such as BookBaby, Smashwords, and Draft2Digital. The reason I wrote the blog was to convince new indie authors that it wasn’t that difficult …
Continue reading Publishing print-books and e-books using Scrivener
Have you read a book you simply couldn’t put down? Have you ever thought about how the writer did that — kept you engrossed in the story? In contrast, have you ever read a book where you’ve found yourself skipping through passages to speed up the story? The difference between these two books is that …
JMJ Williamson 