Angela Booth's Writing Blog

Write A Novel Readers Love: 5 Tips

Write a novel readers love, and can experience

Readers read to experience. If you can’t touch their emotions, they’ll stop reading.

It’s always useful to read readers’ reviews on Amazon. Bestselling authors aren’t immune from bad reviews, and you can find a lot of these types of comments when authors haven’t delivered a novel that readers want:

• “Waste of money. Nothing much happened…”
• “The story ended at 50% and then dragged on… ”
• “Boring, no tension, too thin…”
• Etc.

Let’s look at five tips which will help you to write a novel which readers love.

via www.justwriteabook.com

Writing Fiction Made Easy: My Top 5 Tips

Do you enjoy writing fiction? If you find fiction a challenge, you may be using the wrong part of your brain. As we discussed in our article on telling better lies, you write fiction with your imagination, not with your logical brain.

When you’re writing fiction, you’re using your imagination

Yes, you need logic after you’ve written, but not before. Logic tells you that if your novel takes place in 1800, your main character can’t be in London on Monday, and in Edinburgh, Scotland, on Tuesday.

Imagination always comes first, and using your imagination is just daydreaming, and that’s fun.

Now let’s look at my top five easy tips for making writing fiction easier.

via www.fabfreelancewriting.com

Rescue Your Unfinished Novel With These 3 Fiction Tips

There’s a reason you haven’t completed your novel: acknowledge it

There’s always a reason that we procrastinate, or give up, on a novel. We give ourselves excuses, but the real reason is beyond those excuses. Acknowledge the reason, if you know it. Ask your creative self to handle it, and give you ideas for a solution.

Should your inner critic pop up, thank him for his opinions: “I don’t like the heroine, she’s fake!”, “You’ve got too many characters!”, “Call that a plot?!”

Then ignore him.

Take a few deep breaths, and know that you’ve got this. Remember to feel at ease, and take these three steps.

via peneloperedmont.com

Self-Publishing? Creating Amazon KDP Paperbacks Has Benefits

If you publish with Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) you’ve seen the option to create a paperback underneath your Kindle Ebook option when you create a new title. Have you tried it?

To date, I haven’t, because I’m confused about what the difference is between KDP Print POD and Amazon Createspace. Createspace has more features — some of which will be coming to KDP Print, Amazon says, but why the new Print On Demand (POD) option?

via www.fabfreelancewriting.com

3 Author Behaviors Which Will Kill Your Career

You’re a professional author — what you say and do matters to your career

You’ve published a book. Whether you sell ten copies or 100,000, be aware that people are watching:

• Editors and agents will Google your name;
• Your readers will form an opinion of who you are, and that will affect whether or not they buy your next book;
• Other authors will form an opinion too.

Let’s look at some author behaviors which will damage your career, or kill it entirely.

via www.justwriteabook.com

3 Secrets For Plotting Fiction: Tell Better Lies

Make plotting fiction easier: learn how to tell better lies

A quote from George R.R. Martin:

Fiction is lies; we’re writing about people who never existed and events that never happened when we write fiction, whether its science fiction or fantasy or western mystery stories or so-called literary stories. All those things are essentially untrue. But it has to have a truth at the core of it.

So, how do you tell better lies?

When fiction editors tell authors that their stories are a snooze, they advise them to “develop their characters” and “add complications.”

Let’s look at three secrets, starting with complications.

via www.fabfreelancewriting.com

How To Write Fiction When You “Don’t Know How”

Consider that essentially: fiction is daydreaming and igniting experiences in your readers.

Want to write fiction? Get out of your mind

Children are good at daydreaming. If you listened to your schoolteachers when they said “pay attention” you might think that daydreaming is wrong. However, fiction writers know that they daydream their stories to life.

Big tip: it’s not about the words.

In my fiction writing classes, new fiction writers focus on the words. That’s natural, because you’re getting used to writing. However, as we suggest in step 4, below, there are no perfect words. More to the point, if you focus on the words, your imagination will sit in a corner and sulk.

via www.justwriteabook.com

Short Fiction: 3 Tips To Help You To Do More With Less

Why you should consider writing short fiction, even though novels sell better

Here’s the thing. Although novels sell better than short stories, you’ll make more money per page with your short fiction than you will writing novels. So, if you’re solely in it for the money, that’s something to keep in mind.

Other reasons:

• Your short stories help you to write better novels;
• Short stories and novellas help you to sell your novels;
• Writing and publishing short fiction is an excellent marketing tactic.

via www.fabfreelancewriting.com

Plot Fiction: Fill-In-The-Blanks Plotting For Pantsers

“I can’t plot fiction,” a student told me. “My mind doesn’t work that way.”

She’s a fellow pantser. We pantsers can plot, if we have to, but plotting kills our inspiration for our novel.

In our Hot Plots program, I teach an organic method of plotting which convinces pantsers that they can plot. However, all you need to do to become comfortable writing your novels is a basic structure for a novel which stops you getting hopelessly stuck.

Think of it as “fill-in-the-blanks” plotting.

Let’s look at that now.

via www.justwriteabook.com

Writing Today: Facebook, If You’re Trying To Build A Business

Writing today, and building a business on Facebook

I know that many writers today build their writing business on Facebook. Why not? It’s easy, right? You don’t need to bend your brain or pay money to set up a blog. Facebook is free.

You can set up a Facebook page, and that operates as your de facto blog. You can create groups to promote your self-publishing efforts. Facebook can be very useful, and again… it’s free.

That’s true, but there are challenges.

I wrote about building your business on someone else’s property in this post on blogging dangerously:

That’s the lesson to take away from all those freebie blogging platforms which seem amazing, but over which you have zero control, and which are — POOF — gone. Your blog is just a single decision away from closing — a decision which is made by someone else.

Am I recommending that you leave Medium, Blogger, WordPress.com and other “free” platforms? No, I’m not. If you don’t have the time to deal with your own web hosting so you can blog using WordPress or Squarespace on your own website, it’s a decision you make.

via www.fabfreelancewriting.com

Your Writing Deadlines: 5 Tips To Survive Them

Meeting writing deadlines is a decision: make it now

For my first few years as a commercial writer, I hoped that I would be able to meet my deadlines. Finally — a few annoyed clients later — I realized that hope wasn’t enough. I had to make a decision. Did I want to deal with a lot of stress? Writing can be very stressful. I didn’t want to deal with the additional stress of “hoping.”

So I made a decision. I decided that baring fire, flood and acts of god, I would meet every deadline I set. No exceptions. Once I made that decision, I was immediately less stressed because I avoided taking on projects which were wrong for me — if I found them boring, or didn’t want to research the topic.

Here are some tips which I’ve shared with my students; I hope that they will help you with your deadlines too.

via www.fabfreelancewriting.com

Writing Fiction: Write Easy Outlines Which Sell Your Ebook

Do you love writing fiction, but hate writing outlines? This can present real challenges. I’m a pantser, so minimal outlines suit me.

I have a trick which will help you to create a minimal outline which will not only help you to write your ebook (or book, same thing), but will also help you to sell it.

Not a pantser? Love outlines? If you love outlines, you can expand on your minimal outline to create an outline which is as detailed as you like.

via peneloperedmont.com