Process
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Your book is your baby, a comparison study
I am a mother. I have two human children. I am a book mother. I have several finished manuscripts with lots and lots of fictional humans that I made. Now, before anyone gets upset, I know my human children are actual children and therefore more important than my fictional children, or my books. BUT… after Read more
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Can friends be your beta readers?
You know you can’t rely on your mom and bff to be objective beta readers. You know that your neighbor and your co-worker will not give you reliable feedback (or any most of the time). So should you even bother with giving your manuscript to the friends who request it? What purpose does it serve Read more
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Writing through a crisis
I’ve read the stories of many authors, not their books, their personal stories. How they came to be a writer, how they finished their first books, how they got published. A theme has come out through all these stories. My relationship fell apart and for a while I didn’t write My dad got sick and Read more
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Researching your Book: Is the internet enough?
Oh we have it so easy today, don’t we? Instead of spending hours in the reference section of the library, we have wikipedia and google. We can literally type any question we want into a search engine and get the most direct answer out there. If we need a book we can get it without Read more
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The unformed idea
The majority of my work languishes on my hard drive. I’ll never delete it but if I’m honest with myself, I’ll probably never complete it either. A great deal of it is unworthy of completion. Ridiculously contrived premises based on books or movies or just my own young frustrations. My first and only screenplay (written Read more
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84,500 words. 1 Month. Done. Bam
Ten tips that helped me accomplish a full length first draft in a month. Read more
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How to fight like a girl; when your female protagonist is attacked
At some point in your writing, your female protagonist might be attacked by a man. If you haven’t given her super powers or a strong background in martial arts getting her out of the situation might be tricky. Read more
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How to keep writing? Skip the boring parts
I am writing the first draft and I want to keep going with it, if something is boring me enough stop writing than I am going to just move on to build up or an exciting parts. Read more
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When you have to write a love scene
So, if you find yourself in a spot where you need to write a love scene, here are some things that can help you get through it. Read more
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The writing zone
Friday night I had an idea. It started out as a spark, a character, a situation and it rapidly spread into a fire, a plot, subplots, background, twists, heartbreaks, climax and resolution. I wrote the first chapter and then I sat outside for fifteen minutes, staring into space. If anyone had come across me at Read more
LC W. Allingham 