Just like handover notes will help when coming back to a project after time away, taking stock as you move from one year to the next is a great habit to get into. It also helps shift you into the right head and physical space to achieve your writing goals, with a reset if you're …
Continue reading Taking Stock: Resetting To Hit Your Writing Goals
As writers, we’ve all had those moments when it’s been hard to sit down and write. It could be because other responsibilities have kept us away from our writing desks, or illness has sidelined us. Then there are those times when we’ve been able to write and we just… don’t. When that happens, it’s down …
Continue reading How To Stop Self-Sabotaging Your Writing Progress
When you set out to write a novel, you quickly learn that it takes a lot of drafts. There’s the first draft, which is laying down the story. The second works out what the story is missing, and every draft after is refining until it becomes the finished book. How many drafts that takes depends …
Continue reading Motivational Tricks To Keep You Working On Your Manuscript
Just as book trends see certain genres fall in and out of favor, there are certain elements of books that once worked but now no longer do. One such example is the clichéd mirror look, aka when the author has the MC look in a mirror and describe themselves so the reader knows how they …
Continue reading 5 Ways To Describe A Character Without Using The Clichéd Mirror Look
If you follow me on social media, you’ll know I’ve spent the last few months editing my latest WIP. It’s book 3 in my Urban Fantasy YA series, Blackbirch, and I’m aiming to have it published in the first half of this year. I spent most of 2020 rewriting the draft I penned back in …
There are so many things to include when penning a book. Not only do you need to create relatable characters, a plot that works, and a world that is believable, but you need to fill that world with details. One thing that can be easy to overlook when it comes to details is room settings. …
When you become a writer, one of the "rules" you're advised to learn is to avoid info-dumping. If you haven't heard of it before, it's when the writer bombards the reader with everything they think they should know—all at once. While you might think there's no way you do that, info-dumping is an easy trap …
I usually like my first blog for a new year to be all about resolutions, but after the year that was 2020, and with 2021 shaping up to be more of the same, making resolutions or plans is a moot point (or a cow's opinion—a reference for anyone who spent a good chunk of lockdown …
Ah, point of view (POV), a writing essential to include in your book but something that you can get so easily wrong. It doesn't take much to slip from the view of the character who is telling your story, and you might not even notice you've done it. That's where the following advice comes in …
Continue reading Point Of View Errors! How To Spot And Fix Them
K.M. Allan 