A Conversational Style [Author Post]
When I gave out a list of rules for writing most kinds of text, I left one out: write in a conversational style. …
writing
Write Something. Write Anything [Author Post]
Have you ever sat there, thinking “I wish I could write?” Not “I wish I could write like [Joe Schmo]” or anyone in particular, just “I wish I could write.” I think you can. I don’t mean ‘the one novel that’s in all of us.’ Believe me, not everyone has a novel in them. Just write something. Write anything. …
Do Readability Scores work?
Some seventy years after its invention the Flesch readability test is used by marketers, policy writers and bloggers; but do Readability Scores work? …
Working with Kindle Create
Amazon’s MOBI format for Kindle is strictly proscribed and validated whenever a file is uploaded to Amazon. Working with Kindle Create software should be the best route to a valid e-book file. But unless your book is the simplest, text-only layout, Kindle Create is a struggle. …
Seven Deadly Fears of Writing
What’s been stopping you from producing that magnum opus? Taken from the opening of Jurgen Wolff’s 2007 Your Writing Coach, what follows is our take on his Seven Deadly Fears of Writing. …
Outlining a book
Sixty, seventy, eighty thousand words or more. That’s your typical novel. Somehow you have to get to there from a blank page. Unless you’re an accomplished free-writer, outlining a book can help. …
The First Draft
There are many ways to start writing a book, both fiction and non-fiction. Without a first draft, you don’t have a book, just an idea. But a completed first draft is just that – a beginning and not an end.
Whether you sit down and start at the beginning and just write down whatever comes from your stream of consciousness, or you carefully plan and outline the whole thing from beginning to end, whatever gets you started has value. …
Get Writing tips – the daily discipline
The BBC used to have an educational site called Get Writing, no longer live but some of the content migrated into BBC Writers’ Room.
Get Writing was a fantastic resource for aspiring writers and would regularly post tips, exercises and how-to’s from renowned authors. One of these concerned the discipline of writing regularly.
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Editing tips
Everyone teaches Creative Writing these days, but it often looks like no one teaches Precise Editing. We’re all led to believe that creative writing flows effortlessly from our finger tips in an unbroken stream of consciousness. It doesn’t. Good writing is hard work; good, finished writing is down to good, solid editing.
Few texts can fail to be improved by several rounds of re-reading and re-editing, cutting and honing until the best possible version is achieved.
And how do you edit, exactly? Here’s a basic tool set. …