Wordplay: Helping Writers Become Authors

Plot twists can bring a whole new dimension to your story. But done with less finesse than not, they can also submarine the whole thing.

In a nutshell, Story Cartel offers readers free e-books in exchange for honest reviews.

Could authors tap into crowdsourcing networks for help with mundane and time-consuming (and expensive) tasks like cover design, book layout, and editing?

When we place the emphasis on non-actions, we're failing to tell readers what they should be visualizing.

Always be aware of what you're promising readers.

Readers feel condescended to when you let your characters ramble on in enigmatic sentences that hint at something juicy and interesting without including readers.

We can start getting all obsessive-compulsive about creating a perfect first draft - and we end by totally psyching ourselves out.

To create the best story possible, we have to not just spend the time to prep and write a book, but also the months and even years necessary to smooth out all its rough spots.

Over-explaining can manifest in several ways, but the core of the problem is always repetition - and it's usually symptomatic of authorial insecurity.

The obstacle that stands between your character and his overall story goal could be any number of non-human manifestations.

Writers write. But sometimes, when they have good reasons for doing so, writers don't write.

What steps can you take to come up with your own perfect title?

Trust your characters to be lovable without affectations, and trust your readers to be smart enough to hear the accents with only a few prompts.

Readers don't like to be cheated, lied to, or tricked. And that's where foreshadowing comes into play.

If we can spend less time trying to find our favorite pen or our notes on one of our minor characters, we'll be able to spend more time actually writing.