Worderella Writes

Building Novel Templates

I found this article online to help you structure your projects. It seems simple enough, and isn’t a strict outline, which I have never been able to do. Instead, it helps you make a list of major plot points, which does make it seem suspiciously like an outline. Perhaps it’s just how Parnell talks about his method, but I just seemed to find this article helpful. Give it a try, it might help with your writer’s block (even if you are in the middle of a project).

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Keep Your Writing Sharp…By Reading A Lot

The following wonderful writing advice was found at Carrie’s Procrastinatory Outlet. Her original post is about why we, as writers, should analyze why we, as readers, decide to put a book down. This analysis should improve our writing and help us with our editing, is her main point. I decided to share her writing tips with you, but click the link above if you want to read the original blog post or start reading Carrie on a normal basis.

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Quote: Embellishment

Do not embellish so much in the pursuit of drama that you lose sight of the truth. Beware telling only one side of the story. It’s unfair to your audience, leaving them to think and act on false impressions.
- Jennifer Jackson (arcaedia at LiveJournal)

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Quote: The Plot

The primary purpose of the plot is to give the protagonist a reason to change in the direction she needs to change.
- Alicia Rasley

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Can’t Slow Down

I can’t remember if I mentioned this already (and I’m too lazy to look at the last couple entries to find out), so let me say this now: school is back in session. This surely explains the lack of posts and the reason why it is taking me three weeks to finish one book when normally, I finish three books in one week.

That aside, I am fighting for my right to write.

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Trials of an Editor

Think your editor, or all editors, have it good because they get to sit around proofreading the next Great American Novel while drinking tea? I never really thought about it. Most the things I hear about are how difficult it is to be a writer, or an agent, or a publisher. But the editor? Well, I guess I figured they sat around reading already approved manuscripts and that there were enough of them to go around. According to Lucia Macro, that’s very untrue. Read below to find out just how a real editor spends her day:

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Angela Booth’s Top 10 to Help You Write More

Top Ten Writing Tips to Help You Write More
- Angela Booth

Tip One: Pay attention to images
Your right brain thinks in images, and when you write, you translate images from your right brain into words. Usually this process happens so quickly that you’re unaware of it. If you can make this process conscious, you can goose up your own creativity. Stephen King calls this process “writing with the third eye — the eye of imagination and memory.”

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Happy New Year, Get Studying

Happy New Year everyone! May your muse shine brightly this year.

Now to some business: for those of you who are interested in taking graduate-level courses, check out the following programs. Some of them are only a week long, but cram enough information to cover a year-long publishing internship/entry-level job. I suggest looking these over, especially if you’re thinking of self-publishing and doing it properly and well. Also, it looks great on your resume, and, I think, looks even better than saying you have a graduate degree in Creative Writing. The thing is, a creative writing degree is hard to sell unless you came from a prestigious school or had a well-known writer as your lecturer. Even so, having the degree only means you know the tricks–it says nothing about whether you can apply them or not. With a publishing degree, it shows you take the process of writing a book seriously. Your publishing house/agent/whomever knows that you understand the process and therefore know that even though they’re publishing the book, your marketing skills are absolutely key.

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Quote: New Year’s Resolutions

My New Year’s resolution is to focus on the book and forget all the crap that surrounds the writing business. To lose myself in a story, and not give a damn if it makes any lists, has a good sell-through, gets glowing reviews on Amazon, pleases my editors, hell, even pleases my readers. I want to love what I’m writing so much that none of the rest of it matters, and if I don’t, I won’t write it. Life’s too short to abuse the muse.
- Anne Stuart

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Miss Snark’s How to Write a Hook

Taken from Miss Snark, here is the general template on how to make your hook act, read, and seem like an actual hook.

X is the main guy; he wants to do:
Y is the bad guy; he wants to do:
they meet at Z and all L breaks loose.
If they don’t resolve Q, then R starts and if they do it’s L squared.

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