http://www.novel-writing-help.com/novel-writing-blog.html Subscribe to the Novel Writing Blog to keep up-to-date with all additions and major changes to the Novel Writing Help Web Site en-us novel writing Mon, 08 Mar 2010 13:52:12 GMT Mon, 08 Mar 2010 13:52:12 GMT novel-writing-help.com http://www.novel-writing-help.com/novel-writing-membership.html If you want to succeed in novel writing, you need the best information available. That is where Novel Writing Help comes in. The material on this website has been 25 years in the making... Mon, 08 Mar 2010 13:52:11 GMT http://www.novel-writing-help.com/index.html If you believe that novel writing is beyond you, or that it is something only the intellectual elite can succeed in, think again. Everybody has something worthwhile to say and Novel Writing Help can show you how to say it. Sun, 07 Mar 2010 18:01:54 GMT http://www.novel-writing-help.com/advanced-novel-writing.html This is the part of Novel Writing Help where I move away from the essentials of writing a novel and begin to explore some aspects of the subject in even greater detail. Sun, 07 Mar 2010 17:24:50 GMT http://www.novel-writing-help.com/submitting-a-manuscript.html Before talking about how to go about submitting a manuscript of your novel, the first thing to deal with is who, exactly, you should approach Sun, 07 Mar 2010 11:28:23 GMT http://www.novel-writing-help.com/narrative-writing.html Here is a dictionary definition of narrative writing: The narrated part of a literary work, as distinct from dialogue. This section looks at how to structure a narrative (primarily through showing and telling) and at the art of descriptive writing. Sun, 07 Mar 2010 11:25:27 GMT http://www.novel-writing-help.com/descriptive-writing.html Descriptive writing is a way of putting words down on paper so that they paint a picture. Novel writing is not a visual medium, but novel writers nevertheless want readers to visualize the stories they tell. Descriptive writing is the way they achieve this. Sun, 07 Mar 2010 11:22:17 GMT http://www.novel-writing-help.com/writing-prose.html This article is all about how to achieve variety when writing prose. But before I talk about how to do that, I should first say that variety is something you should aim for in novel writing in general, not just when writing prose. Sun, 07 Mar 2010 11:21:21 GMT http://www.novel-writing-help.com/writing-fiction.html What does writing fiction with pace mean? There is really nothing complicated about it. It simply means writing fiction that is fast (pacey) enough not to bore the readers, but slow enough that you don't leave them unsatisfied. Sun, 07 Mar 2010 11:16:28 GMT http://www.novel-writing-help.com/writing-a-narrative.html There are two ways of writing a narrative. One is by showing and the other is by telling. It is how you combine these two methods of narrative writing that will ultimately determine your novel's success. Sun, 07 Mar 2010 11:14:59 GMT http://www.novel-writing-help.com/how-to-write-a-book.html When I say How to Write a Book, I'm talking about the actual writing, or the setting down of words on paper in the form of prose - as opposed to planning the book, which is what you have been busy doing up to now. Sun, 07 Mar 2010 11:13:51 GMT http://www.novel-writing-help.com/writers-block.html Writer's block can actually afflict any part of novel writing, starting with an inability to come up with a decent idea in the first place. Mostly, though, it is associated with writing a first draft. Is there a cure for writer's block? I believe so, yes. Sun, 07 Mar 2010 11:09:28 GMT http://www.novel-writing-help.com/first-draft.html The process of actually writing a novel couldn't be simpler. Start by writing a first draft. And that means filling several hundred blank pages with words. Not pretty words, necessarily, but words which accurately convey WHAT you want to say in the novel. Then revise that draft. Which means getting HOW you say it right. Sun, 07 Mar 2010 11:04:59 GMT http://www.novel-writing-help.com/story-elements.html So far in the planning phase of the novel writing process, you have been looking at all of the story elements - plot, character, viewpoint, setting, and theme - in isolation. It is now time to combine these story elements to make the Final Plan Sun, 07 Mar 2010 11:04:03 GMT http://www.novel-writing-help.com/3rd-person.html So which is best: 3rd Person or 1st Person? As you can probably guess, there is no answer to that question. 1st person point of view is the better choice for some novels, 3rd person point of view for others. It all depends on the material Sun, 07 Mar 2010 08:51:34 GMT http://www.novel-writing-help.com/fiction-genres-3.html This section on the fiction genres is for those of you who have decided to specialize in one of the commercial categories of fiction - crime novels, horror novels, and so on. Unlike literary fiction and mainstream fiction, genre novels are governed by rules which you must more or less stick to if you wish to be successful. Sun, 07 Mar 2010 08:46:45 GMT http://www.novel-writing-help.com/how-to-write-a-novel.html Learning how to write a novel can be confusing, probably because there are so many elements to the novel writing process: creating characters, writing a plot, writing all the subplots and so on. It's little wonder that the question I am most often asked about novel writing is, Where do you even begin? Sun, 07 Mar 2010 08:43:02 GMT http://www.novel-writing-help.com/how-to-write-prose.html Learning how to write prose and dialogue like a professional writer isn't so much a step in the Novel Writing Process as a lifetime's work. You are not going to become a master wordsmith in a couple of days. But I have included it here because it seemed like the most logical place to put it. Sun, 07 Mar 2010 08:39:51 GMT http://www.novel-writing-help.com/novel-writing-process-2.html You are probably thinking that the Novel Writing Process has placed an awful lot of emphasis on planning and not very much on the thing that drew you to novel writing in the first place - the actual writing. But that is quite deliberate Sun, 07 Mar 2010 08:36:49 GMT http://www.novel-writing-help.com/novel-outline.html A novel outline is the bridge between the simple idea you came up with in the previous step and a full-blown plan for the novel. Writing a novel outline isn't a crucial step in the writing process, but personally I find it very helpful. Sun, 07 Mar 2010 08:31:31 GMT http://www.novel-writing-help.com/on-writing-2.html The monthly Writers On Writing series is not about offering you a glimpse of what other creative writing instructors have said on the subject. Instead, it offers insights into what some of the true greats of literature have had to say about the practice of their craft. Sun, 28 Feb 2010 16:28:30 GMT http://www.novel-writing-help.com/story-setting.html A story setting is the backdrop against which the characters act out the events. A story with a poorly portrayed setting is like a play taking place on a virtually bare stage - you have character and plot and theme but no sense of place. Fri, 12 Feb 2010 15:31:13 GMT