Seven Key Elements of Pacing Your Novel. We hear it all the time, “start with action.”
I see the results of that every month in the First Five Pages Workshop, where writers have heard it so often they automatically think they have to start with a murder, a car crash, or an explosion to get someone’s attention. But here’s the thing. Every novel has its own speed, and its own readership. There's no one-size fits all solution. 21 Fast Hacks to Fuel Your Story With SuspenseWritersDigest.com. Occasionally I talk to school children about writing.
I begin by asking them how many sheets of paper it takes to write a novel. They guess, and suddenly they very much want to know the answer. Five Incredibly Simple Ways to Help Writers Show and Not Tell. Show me, show me.
Show, don’t tell is one of the trickiest things for beginners to grasp. It’s something we teach on our Writers Write course, and it's an ‘aha moment’ that can’t be rushed. Horror Authors: How to Scare the Heck Out of Your Readers. The Central Question. This post was first published here on January 28, 2013.
Every plot hinges on a central question. Posing the question at the beginning of the tale and answering it at the end is sound story architecture. Does that task make your head spin?