Tag: writing fiction

Choose Your Pain—Hobbyist vs. Professional Author

This blog focuses mainly on those writers who desire to make a living writing fiction. Last post, The Single Best Way to Become a Mega-Author garnered an interesting comment, though not an unusual one. Anytime I write one of my posts regarding success or sales or being a best-seller, inevitably I get the “What about …

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The Engine of Fiction—Meet the Antagonist

One of the major issues with first-time novels is that the young writer fails to understand what a novel really is. All great stories are about one thing and one thing only—PROBLEMS. More specifically? Every good story has one core problem in need of being resolved. Granted, there will be many other problems along the way, …

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Save Money on Professional Edits—6 Easy Ways to Clean Up Your Own Manuscript

Over my career I have literally edited thousands of works, most of them written by emerging writers. My greatest frustration always was (and still is) when I couldn’t even GET to critiquing the deeper story elements because I was too distracted by these all too common oopses. Good editors are NOT cheap. There are also many editors …

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Why the Reader Put That Book Down

These are the mistakes that will have me railing at the heavens and throwing a book across the room…followed by depression because I can never get those wasted hours back.

13 Reasons Authors are Mistaken for Serial Killers

Seriously. I once spent an entire afternoon googling Fort Worth hotels to find the right one with a balcony to toss someone off of. I was like the Goldilocks of murder.