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To win National Novel Writing Month, you have to write 50,000 words in 30 days. Sound impossible? Not if you break it down to a daily word count of 1,667 words. Heck, bump it up just a couple hundred words…
Believe it or not, how you spend the next ten minutes of your writing time might determine whether you win or lose National Novel Writing Month. I’m not kidding. There’s one single thing that you absolutely must do if want…
Insert story ideas here. Not too long ago, I sat down to start writing a brand new novel. Always a pulse-pounding moment. Except this time, I was ready. Coming up with story ideas on the fly can be simultaneously thrilling…
Last time, I talked about how to get (and handle) constructive feedback on your novel without losing your mind. If you haven’t read that post, go back and check it out. (Hey, why not? It’s free!) Now, here’s how to…
Anyone who has ever gone through the pain and joy of publishing a novel can tell you that writing a novel is just the first step. It might be the hardest part, but even after you type “The End” there’s…
If you’ve ever tried to write a synopsis before, you know that it’s anything but quick and easy. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just sink into your beach chair, dig your toes in the sand and toss off…
This is a popular question, mostly because everyone seems to define a synopsis differently. Is it one page or fifty? Does it give away the ending or not? Here’s what you need to know. A synopsis is a condensed description…
Q: I’m about five chapters into writing my first novel and I’ve reached a total impasse. I flat-out don’t know where to go from here. Everything started out so well, I had lots of story ideas and the pages were…
Write a novel on an AlphaSmart. Why not? Q: When I’m writing a novel, how do I stop myself from going back and fixing things? As I write, I’m afraid to even look at the screen because I’ll hate what…
As I write this, my unpublished novel Cold Million is a finalist in the Colorado Gold contest, which is held every year by the incomparable Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers. The competition is stiff. I’m up against some of the finest…
I’ve talked to dozens of best-selling authors about their early years, before they were published. And the similarities between them are striking. On average, they wrote about half a dozen unpublished manuscripts before they sold a novel. (By the way, this is what I call the Myth of the First Novel. Because it’s hardly ever…
I’ll let you in on a secret: readers want your character to change. They know, deep down, that your character is unhappy with the status quo at the beginning of your book. Something is terribly wrong in your character’s life, and things can’t keep going on this way. Something’s got to give. Readers fervently hope…
LAURENCE MACNAUGHTON 