How to write more compelling characters
And how a deceptively simple question can help you do it I am in the middle of pitching a new police procedural series to a major digital-first publisher. We’ve worked together before and I’m playing pitch-doc tennis with my editor as we collaborate on the shape of the series. The proposal has gone through three […]
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Five writing productivity hacks for authors who want to publish more books
There are a lot of blog posts out there about how to write better. You’ll find a fair number in our Writers Resource Center. But this isn’t that. This article is about how to write faster — or, more precisely, how to write more words. Publishing my first novel took me six months, from hand-writing […]
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How to write great dialogue in a novel
In this post we'll talk about how to write great dialogue. The principles outlined below mostly apply to novel writing, but they also apply to screenplays, short stories and other forms of creative writing.
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Premise: What your book is really all about
This is part three of a three-part series on Storytelling Tips. Also see: • Part 1: Creating compelling characters for your novel • Part 2: Mind your language: Repetition, clichés and modifiers In his excellent book about screenwriting, Save the Cat, Blake Snyder suggests you imagine your dad or mom asking you to finish the sentence, […]
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Mind your language: Repetition, clichés and modifiers
This is part two of a three-part series on Storytelling Tips. Also see: • Part 1: Creating compelling characters for your novel • Part 3: Premise: What your book is really all about One way of splitting novelists into two camps is between storytellers and stylists. Storytellers are all about the tale. A stranger comes […]
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Creating relatable characters for your novel
What is the one ingredient shared by every bestseller? A great, compelling character who's relatable to the reader.
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Writing about guns? Get your ammunition right
How to make sure your fictional firearms don’t jam Part two of a two-part series. See part one: The right way to write about guns in novels Rounds, cartridges, shells or bullets? In this article I’ve been scrupulous about referring to “rounds” when I mean the things you load into your firearm and “bullets” when […]
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The right way to write about guns in novels
A farewell to firearms mistakes: How to get the details correct in scenes with guns First of a two-part series. Also see Part two: Writing about guns? Get your ammunition right See that handgun on your writing desk? There. Just to the right of your keyboard. Go on, pick it up. Heavy, isn’t it? Surprisingly […]
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The storytelling secrets of ‘The Queen’s Gambit’
I like to take inspiration for storytelling from all kinds of sources, not just books. Movies, paintings, dog walks: They can all spark an idea or solve a narrative problem giving me grief. But TV is often a bust. The need to sell advertising or hook viewers into an unending multi-series show often corrupts the […]
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How to create a coherent crime series
A crime fiction author offers writing tips for creating coherent series that have both commercial potential and creative freedom.
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Virtuous villains and flawed heroes
Andy Maslen and Alessandra Torre discuss how to create complex characters for your novel. How to create characters your readers will love (or love to hate) Conflict is at the heart of all great fiction. Without conflict there is no story. “The cat sat on the mat is not the beginning of a story,” thriller […]
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How I learned to stop worrying and love A.I.
The story of how I got past my initial reluctance to use AI to improve my writing When I first heard about Marlowe, the fiction-savvy artificial intelligence from Authors A.I., I experienced two strongly conflicting emotions. Emotion one: An AI can read my entire novel in 15 minutes and tell me what’s good/bad about it? […]
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