A Class on Novel-writing Basics

Say yes to making your novel-writing dreams come true! So often we deny ourselves the opportunities we need to get ahead in achieving our dreams. We put our dreams on the back burner, tell ourselves we’ll do it later. I think later is now.

I wanted to let everyone know that I’ll be teaching a class called “Novel-writing Basics” for Anoka Hennepin Community Education beginning 11/1 (4 Thursday evenings). If you live in the area (Minneapolis) and have aspirations of writing a novel, I would love for you to join us! There is still room in the class!

I’m also hosting a critique night–one night only–on 10/25! If you’ve started your novel and would like a bit of feedback on your writing, this is for you! I would love to see you there!

I’m under contract with Anoka Hennepin Community Education for these classes, and I have worked long hours creating course content. It’s going to be informative and fun!

Get more information and sign up online here:

ANOKAHENNEPIN.CR3.RSCHOOLTODAY.COM

Adult activities & classes – Anoka-Hennepin School District #11

Anoka-Hennepin Community Education offers a wide variety of activities and classes for adults ages 18 and up.

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5 Requirements of All Genre Novels

A few threads tie all types of novels together. Consider the following important aspects of every genre novel.

1. Plot Resolution—every genre puts forth a plot that requires resolution; the ending is not left for a reader to wonder about—the conflicts and dilemmas of the story are always solved. The mystery is solved, the romance is happily resolved, the suspense protagonist always escapes, etc.

2. Likable Protagonist—the genre novel always revolves around a likable character, one that can be admired even as a flawed human being. Perhaps some of their flaws add to their admirability. For example, the recurring detective, Harry Bosch, in Michael Connelly’s novels is stubborn and determined. But its part of what makes him a good detective. Flaws also make the character more relatable to readers. Still, the main character will have more admirable qualities like integrity, courage, intelligence, compassion, etc.

3. Justice—in a genre’s final analysis, there is typically some element of justice. Good triumphs over evil, the underdog wins, wrongdoers are stopped, caught or killed. There is some achievement, accomplishment or triumph.

4. Emotional Impact—every genre carries an emotional impact. If not, why would anyone read it? The novel must pack some sort of emotional stirring that is consistent within its genre. Consider the following:
   • a romance novel will evoke feelings of desire
   • a horror novel will evoke fear
   • a mystery novel will evoke curiosity
   • a suspense novel will evoke the thrill of the chase

When a reader selects a book to read in their favorite genre, this emotional impact is something they count on.

5. Entertainment—a genre novel should be fun and entertaining within its type. Entertaining means that the reader can’t put the book down, they are stimulated and provoked into turning pages. The reader picks up the novel with the expectation that it will provide an entertaining story, perhaps even help them escape to other places, people, and lives for a bit. Make it happen!

 

If you found this article helpful, please share it with your friends on Twitter, Linkedin, and Google+! I appreciate it.  And, as always, I’d love to hear from you. Tell me what you are working on and how these articles have impacted your writing.

How to Get a Book Published – 10 Aspects of an Author’s Journey

The Author’s Reality

Are you an aspiring writer wondering about how to become an author? Are you wondering how to get a book published? If so, you’ve come to the right place. This is a website for writers of all types, particularly those aspiring to be published authors. I’ve covered 16 elements of writing a novel, as well as provide you with information on submitting your work to editors and literary agents. That said, let’s look at what it takes to become an author.

I’m always astounded at the number of people in the world that want to learn how to be an author. The numbers are truly staggering if we go by what we find on the social media sites: the number of aspiring writers on Linkedin, the number of people on Twitter peddling their books – both self-published and traditionally published (i.e., through a major publishing house).

Additionally, doesn’t everyone know

How to Format a Book Manuscript for Submission to Editors

If you’re planning to submit your novel to a literary agent or an editor at a publishing house, it should be in as meticulous a condition as you would strive to be in if you were going to a job interview; and this means knowing how to format a book into a proper manuscript. Various guidelines exist on how to format a book manuscript, but those identified here are generally accepted requirements; they indicate what a literary agent or editor expects from you if they ask to see your novel.

And, if an agency or publishing house has requested to see your manuscript, you don’t want to screw up the opportunity by sending them a misformatted or an unformatted document. I think it’s better to learn how to format a book manuscript properly.

For a visual of how a manuscript will look after following these generally accepted guidelines, please click here to reference A Formatted Book Manuscript Sample.

How to Format a Book Manuscript – Creating the Page Format

A manuscript’s unique layout serves two important purposes:

1. It allows extra space for writing comments on the margins by a reviewer
2. It allows for an easy-to-read presentation of the novel.

To accomplish this, start by going

Improve Your Novel with These 12 Top Writing Resources

There are many great writing resources on the web, but the best resources I’ve found are the ones on my own bookshelf. Writing reference books I’ve collected over the years have taught me how to write a novel, how to build characters, improve scenes, write dialogue – you name it – most everything that I’ve learned about writing has come from the treasures on my bookshelf.

Of course, there are several writing books on that shelf that I could’ve used as kindle for my fall campfires, but many of the books are like gold to me. I refer to the books when I’m writing an article about writing as well as when I’m writing my own fiction. I’ve taken the best of each book, combined some of their ideas, and come up with techniques that have helped me enormously. Many tips that I offer my followers were mined from these books.

Not so surprising is that many of these books are “Writer’s Digest” books. For many years, I subscribed to Writer’s Digest and loved their selection of books, gobbling up everything from books for mystery writers like Cause of Death – a Writer’s Guide to Death, Murder and Forensic Medicine by Keith D. Wilson, M.D. to the many on the basic elements of fiction writing. I want to share some of these treasures with you. Perhaps you will find some that help you improve your craft and get that novel written!

Great Novel Writing Resources – Writer’s Digest Books

The books listed here

Simplify Novel Revision with These Best in Practice Methods

Revision is a key process of novel writing, but to the detriment of many an aspiring author, it is often overlooked and/or misunderstood. Having knocked off that first draft of a novel – the one you’ve already spent hours, months, sometimes even years writing – you might think that the really hard work is done. But it is not done. In many ways, it’s just beginning. The reason we have a manuscript “first draft” is that there are subsequent drafts.

For some, the second draft means running a final spell check, cleaning up punctuation, and they may go as far as removing some of their overzealous adverbs and adjectives. They then declare their work a finished novel.

But not so fast. There is much more to novel revision than spelling and grammar. Much more. Revising a manuscript is a big job, one that an author cannot afford to skip.

Objectivity – the Key to Novel Revision

The new writer tends to be overly attached to their writing and is reluctant to remove any part of it. This is the first thing a novelist must overcome. Novel revision calls for objectivity – it’s not an easy thing. Sometimes we think we’ve written the perfect snappy line of dialogue, the most beautiful scene, and there’s no way you want to edit it out of your novel.

Advice: don’t be too much in love with your own writing. If something isn’t working to either move the story or reveal more about your characters – get rid of it. You don’t have to press the delete button, forever banishing your beloved words

How to Use Images to Enhance Your Blog and Drive Traffic

So many of my followers also have blogs, so I thought I ‘d post an article that I’d written for another site. I think you’ll find it helpful…

One of the best things a blogger or website manager can do to drive traffic to their blog or website is to learn how to use images effectively. The power of the written word is one thing but the use of imagery amplifies whatever story you are trying to tell, by thousands, you know the old adage. So wouldn’t that same rule be applied to images on your blog? It would. 

An Analogy–Attention Span 

Think of a child’s picture book – a toddler’s attention span is short and if we want them to pay attention, we look for books with great pictures. For them, the picture will tell more about the story than the words you read to them. Say it’s a book about a tractor…you can read all about a tractor, but if the child has never visited a farm, they won’t have a clue about what one looks like, what it can do unless you can point to the picture of the tractor as you read the word. Using a picture book, you give the little “reader” two things:

1. An association of words and images to sustain comprehension, and
2. A compelling reason to stay on the page long enough for you to read the rest of the words to them.

It’s a little sad that I’m making this

3 Phases of Writing a Novel – Beginnings, Middles, and Ends

Every novel has 3 phases: a beginning, a middle, and an end.

When rushing through the first draft of writing a novel, a writer often thinks only about getting the story down in black and white. They don’t worry about the words they use, the punctuation required, whether the characters are being true to their primary traits, or any of the other elements of writing that they’ll eventually attend to before the novel is finished.

By the end of the first draft, a writer knows what the story is about, who the lead character is, what conflict the lead must resolve and how they will resolve it. It is the time for the writer to revisit the story, performing revisions that will create a readable, “unputdownable”, story.

Part of this revision includes reviewing the different phases of a story – the beginning, middle, and end; phases that ensure the writer fulfills the implicit promises made to readers.

Writing a Novel that Fulfills Its Promises to the Reader

When I begin a novel, one of the first things that I do is jot down in a few sentences what I believe the novel is about. I also write a few sentences about what I believe will happen in the beginning, middle and end of the story.

Jotting down these notes helps me immensely in knowing where I’m headed in writing a novel. While these notes are closely related to who my lead characters are, what problem they have to solve, what conflicts they might be up against that keep them from solving the problem, and then eventually solving it, their importance goes much further than that. I also need to take into consideration how each phase of writing a novel affects the reader.

Every novel makes two promises two readers:

1. an Emotional Promise, and
2. an Intellectual Promise.

The Emotional Promise goes something like this: “Read this and you will be entertained, thrilled, scared, titillated, saddened, or uplifted, but most of all absorbed.”

There are 3 versions of the Intellectual Promise. They are,

Writing a Novel – Learn What a Scene Is and How to Build One

One of the biggest problems a writer encounters when writing a novel is misunderstanding the definition of a scene. I was once in the same boat. I have a slew of books on writing a novel – they’re all over the place in my home: in my office, living room, on the bedroom floor, in my computer bag, everywhere, a few are even on the bookshelves.

To write this piece of the novel writing puzzle, I dug through each of these rooms in search of the books with the best descriptions for writing scenes. And guess what? I found very little that talked about scenes – defining them, creating them. Novel writing books discuss plot, subplot, characters, motivation, emotion, dialogue, settings, descriptions, and publication – even how to write the blockbuster and breakout novels, but very little print space was allotted for describing how to write scenes.

No wonder writers have a hard time figuring out how to construct a scene when writing a novel. For many writers, the idea of writing a scene seems like a big mystery, something difficult to do that only the best writers know about. But that’s not true. If you’re writing a novel, you can learn to create scenes for it that move your story along and reveal the traits of your character. And that’s why I’m going to address what a scene is and how to go about constructing one.

Writing a Novel Requires Knowing the Definition of a Scene

The word “scene” as it relates to writing a novel (and movies, plays, the opera) can be defined in 3 ways:

1. A scene is a continuous action set in one place

2. A scene is a short section that presents a single event

3. Scenes are the building blocks of a story’s plot.

When writing a novel, a writer must pull all of those definitions together so that the definition of a scene looks like this:

A scene is a short section (in comparison to the whole story) presenting a single event at a single location. A story is a series of scenes that when strung together make up the plot and ultimately the whole story.

Learn the Elements of Writing a Scene

So now that we know what the term “scene” means, let’s look at how a scene is constructed.

The Three Important Elements of E-Book Cover Design

The E-Book Cover Provides the First Impression of Your Work

Your e-Book cover is the first link to sales of your book. A cover that works for both an e-Book and a print book is not the same as designing a cover for the printed book alone. Someone browsing through a brick and mortar bookstore can pick up the book, hold it in their hands and turn it around to read the back cover book summary. They can also read the fine print offering such things as those irritating rave reviews for the already famous author, blurbed by authors of the same publishing house.

An experienced e-Book cover designer understands that the cover of your book has a big job to do and only seconds to do it well. Its job is to make an impression, to entice potential buyers to “click” on your book above all other books on an e-Book retailer site. To accomplish this, a cover’s imagery and typography must be:

1. Eye-catching
2. Winning, and
3. Visually Suitable for Internet Browsing 

A Cover Should Draw New Readers to Your E-Book

E-Book browsers—in this case, potential buyers looking for books—glance at the small cover image and decide in a matter of seconds whether to click on the link to learn more about the book or move on to the next e-Book image. Instead of moving from book to book, having spent a few minutes with each one as they might do browsing in a physical bookstore, browsers are moving from image to image.

The browsers are looking for a good book to read, not necessarily your book. They didn’t begin browsing with your book in mind. These browsers are the type of people that you want to attract with your book cover—new people, people you’ve never met, and that have no relation to you—like your mother, father, siblings, extended family and friends who purchased your book and wrote 5-star reviews for it. These browsers are strangers, looking for a compelling book to read. You want to get a new and extended