Query letters seem like they should be easy, right? After writing a script of several thousand to a hundred thousand words, writing a one-page email should be cake. So why do so many people have problems with it? It’s because they don’t really understand the purpose of a query letter. A query letter is not
I feel like I’ve discussed this ad nauseum, but it was probably tucked into some broader concepts and it’s a HUGE issue. So I wanted to share a very relevant, crucial bit of advice that might make everything easier. What’s backstory? Backstory is usually the deeper, poignant scenes that reveal character motivations. A lot of...
FIRST CHAPTER MISTAKES What follows are some insights I’ve collected, after providing feedback on hundreds of first drafts. I’ve tried to only share general examples that I notice frequently in the majority of inexperienced manuscripts. There is nothing implicitly or inherently wrong with any of these: they are simple, common...
Someone asked me this question recently on YouTube: Where do authors go to learn more about story craft? How do we know when we’ve found a reputable teacher? Is it a college degree in English and literature? What is the best way to learn how to piece together a readable story? I’ve gotten similar questions The 3 secrets to book...
I’ve been hearing more chatter about Plottr, the book-timeline software that helps you map out your novel’s key scenes. A while back someone created a pretty cool template based on my chapter plotting outline, and I’ve been talking with Plottr’s founder to add my template within their tool so everyone can access it. That...
I see this question a lot so here’s a quick answer: Novels are typically 250 to 350 pages; with about 200 to 300 words per page. This will depend on genre and word count. Average novels are 75K to 95K, though some genres can go longer – still, it’s very rare for a novel to The 3 secrets to book marketing, and a haunted...
Testing out my new theme with this poem I wrote for the preface of Book Craft. Help me test the comments by writing your own poem below! My best words come at night. When soft music is humming and birds or bats are chirping and dusk or dawn is peeking above the horizon. When the The 3 secrets to book marketing, and a haunted castle tour...
It’s nearly the end of a long year. If you weren’t as productive as you wanted to be, don’t worry about it! But now might be a good time to start using the clean slate of a new year to set goals and level up your author career. The good news is, publishing success is The 3 secrets to book marketing, and a haunted castle...
Nanowrimo is just around the corner: here’s a brief getting started video with links to my best writing and publishing resources. Start with this: It’s a “Defense of #amwriting” and explanation of my #amwriting tattoo. Basically, Nanowrimo is worth doing for experience; writing quickly and writing a lot is the best way...
I’ve put a lot of effort into plot outlines and templates for writing fiction, but the deeper stuff is sometimes trickier to convey. After all, you can have a brilliant outline that still fails to generate any interest. Intrigue is about delayed gratification which means, information management: not giving away important reveals too...
As seen on Reddit, someone brought up this quote from an old Guardian article. I agree in spirit, but not practice, which is interesting enough to reflect on briefly. Here’s the quote: Those who insist that the job of the writer is simply, only, to write are deluding themselves. Editors whose advice is to get The 3 secrets to book...
This article was originally, mostly, about copyright infringement… but since then, the topic blew up on Twitter as a group of forward thinking YA authors attempted to pull off an NFT-based community writing project and got shredded by activists – cancelling the project in just 5 hours. You can read all about that here (and The 3...
