The guide for aspiring fiction writers who want to improve, sharpen, review, and/or learn.
Warning! This book encourages editing and contains many tips that often require revision. Practice makes perfect, and it's good to workout your mental muscles. The more you do now, the better your writing will be later (because you'll correct yourself *before* you get it on paper).
If you think your writing is perfect or you're lazy or unwilling to try new shoes on your baby, just turn away now. You'll find this guide about as useful as hoarding frozen peas.
- Introduction
- Genre vs Category
- How not to spoil your story :: Criticism and the Writer
- Resting before editing
- What comes first: the grammar or the rewrites?
- Apples and Oranges and Grammar, oh my!
- Cleaning out the fridge (of critiques)
- What do you say after receiving critiques and comments?
- Following the Recipe (IE: The Rules of Writing)
- How do I Improve?
- What is the right tense and pov?
- Those Foul Flaws
- When to Tag
- Dialogue Tags
- Action/Description Tags
- Said vs Whispered, spoke, lied, etc.
- Consistency
- The Eyes Have It
- PSA for Writers: Editing or Beggaring?
- PSA for Editors: IDing Red Flags
- Shortening word count without losing content
- To Use or not to employ: the Thesaurus
- Adverbs
- Dates
- Tell v Show, part one
- Chapter Length
- What is Suspension of disbelief?
- Basic (small-scale) Pacing
- Fight scenes
- Young Writers
- Blurb vs Synopsis
- Who do I ask for help with my story?
- You have to read BOOK TITLE before you can write.
- How do I write [X]?
- I keep getting the same feedback!
- Swearing
- Ways to start a sentence
- Rewrite from scratch
- Little did he know....[aka spoilers]
- Will someone steal my idea?
- How much description is too much?
- A Likable Main Character
- Is my idea interesting/original/unique?
- Character X wouldn't do [action]
- Mystery in Chapter One
- Perfection
- Getting readers to flock to you
- Accuracy
- Why didn't I win?
- Making Paragraphs
- Sentence Order