As a writer penning a book, there will be times when no matter how tight you’ve made your storyline, or how close you’ve stuck to your planned number of pages, you’ve gone over your word count. And not by a little. You've gone over it by a lot. So much so that you’re 20,000 extra …
Well, you did it. You took that spark of an idea, fleshed it out into an entire book, edited the last page for the last time, and finished one final read-through. The book is done. At least it should be. As proud as you were, there was a little voice in your head as you …
Continue reading Editing Tips: What To Check When It Feels Like Something Is Missing
If you read last week’s blog post, you’ll know we looked at some common writing gremlins, such as overwriting, multiple gestures, extra staging, etc (check out the full post here). When the post went live, a few readers commented on underwriting being one of their gremlins. As a chronic overwriter, underwriting hadn’t occurred to me, …
Just as every writer has a way to come up with ideas and put them on the page, there are writing gremlins that pop up with every draft they complete. Sometimes you recognize these gremlins on your own, or sometimes it has to be pointed out to you. This happened to me recently when I …
Any writer who has gotten to the beta reader feedback stage of their writing journey knows handing your MS to others to read is a helpful part of the process. It can be essential for addressing plot issues, character flaws, confusing narratives, what works and what doesn’t, and picking up those elusive typos. It’s also …
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
By the time you're at the tail-end of the writing process, you are so sick of your words you'll do anything to not read them again. This usually happens right around the time you have to read them, though, because you're getting your MS ready to query or publish. But instead of begrudgingly wading through …
The real truth of writing is that you will spend a lot of time editing. A. Lot. Of. Time. Hours, weeks, months, sometimes even years (or at least, what feels like years). When the rush of new ideas is gone. When the thrill of filling in plot holes and working out twists is over. When …
You know that meme where writers name their files "Final Draft", "Final Draft 2", "Final Draft 3", "Really Final Draft", "Really, Really Final Draft", "Seriously Final Draft" etc. I get that. I'm currently working on the sixth draft of an MS I literally named "Final Draft" three drafts ago. Past-Me probably thought it would be. Present-Me …
K.M. Allan 