fiction writing

Promotion & MarketingSelf-PublishingTraditional publishing

Fear-based decision making and writers

From Rick: I’ve been incredibly remiss lately in posting to the blog. It’s been five weeks since the last post. I’ve been focusing on what a writer should focus on: his own writing, and I have several projects ongoing. It’s

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Bad writing habitsBasics of writingCritiquesNovel writing

Writing advice: Who should you listen to?

From Rick: Here’s the problem: Advice on writing is easy to come by, but who should you listen to for the most reliable advice? What do you do when the advice is contradictory? —Should you listen to the bestselling authors

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Basics of writingHow to write a storyNovel writing

Story flaws: Finding and fixing them—PART 2

From Rick: In PART-1, I talked about three major flaws a story can have: (1) The story fails to engage the reader (2) The characters fail to engage the reader (3) The story takes too long to become interesting (or

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Bad writing habitsBasics of writingNovel writingStory Details

Overwritten manuscripts: how to fix—PART 2

From Rick: Last time, I pointed out several ways in which writers overwrite their stories and novels: —unnecessary dialogue tags —wordiness in general —unnecessary repetition of information To that list I want to add: —unnecessary use of characters’ names —repeated

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Bad writing habitsBasics of writingNovel writingStory Details

Overwritten: a surfeit of words—PART 1

From Rick: Mark Twain’s essay “Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses” is famous both for its typical Twain humor and for Twain’s rules for good writing. I’ve mentioned this essay before. You can do a Google search for it, or you can

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