I have been working my way through a pile of unsolicited manuscripts over the last week or so. Some have a lot of potential! However, many have one major flaw; the lack of “showing” and lots of …
Christmas is a great time to people watch, and get some tips for when you are creating characters for your novel. This Christmas, if you are meeting with family and …
If you write novels for 8-14s, do you need to include quotes from Shakespeare plays, make a passing reference to the Spanish Inquisition, and have your protagonist quote Scripture? We all use …
I think I may have mentioned something like this before in a writing tip, but it’s worth mentioning again as it’s a common problem I see in unsolicited manuscripts: when …
We all know the one about the panda who eats shoots and leaves. Or does he eat, shoot and leave? Correct punctuation can at times be essential to the meaning of …
Wordiness is one of the most common problems I see in unsolicited manuscripts – there are many ways of tightening up a story and improving the pace; here are 3 of …
Want to look professional? Presentation of your manuscript is important, whether you are approaching an agent, a publisher, or entering a competition. Here are some guidelines: Spacing: Use double line …
You may have a brilliantly written, exciting novel, but if the beginning is a bit dull, you risk losing your readers before they get to the good bit. This is …
The answer is, as few as possible! If you can keep the number of characters in your story down to the bare minimum, it will make your writing less complicated, …
Five things we need to know about our characters before starting to write: Whoever we are writing for, we need to have characters that our readers identify with. The better …
