Category: Publishing

5 Writing Posts to Make You a Better Author – where am I going with this? I found these great articles teaching writing skills. Then I thought, “Maybe other people can benefit from these. Other authors, poets, non-fiction writers and students can all learn.

So tell me if you like this kind of blog post here.

5 Writing Posts – Your First Lesson

Just kidding! I thought I’d start with a laugh. Here’s the real article next.

Yes, that’s right. This initial post covers everything you should NOT do as a writer. It’s a simple list, but it covers most of the bad things writers can do and do do.

Your Next Lesson

Now you get a video tutorial on how to structure a book.

The following quickly summarizes :

1. Hero’s Journey
2. Save the Cat – 15 beat story structure
3. The Plot Embryo
4. 27 chapters (3 act structure) Each act into 3 blocks and each block has three chapters.

Do I follow these structures? Not consciously. I seek to start quickly with a tense situation, and build through each chapter. I’ll have ‘relief’ chapters where I surprise the reader with new, interesting characters and conflicts, before returning to the big conflict. The problems build through the book until they’re finally resolved in a big climax. Then I throw in a twist at the end.

I did this for each of my books:

5 Writing Posts – Your Third Lesson

Now, let’s tackle that dreaded activity–editing after you’ve written your book.

My quick summary, in time order:

1. Developmental editing – story structure and organization
2. Line editing – making each sentence the best it can be.
3. Copy editing – getting rid of stupid speling misteaks and grammar errorz and punctuation!!!
4. Proofreading – how does the final copy look on the page? Font size, spacing, paragraphs, page breaks.

I just use items 2-4. I’ve never really had anyone criticize my structure so far. My editor for edit types 1-3 is Dori Harrell at Breakout Editing. She’s worked on Zombie Turkeys, My Undead Mother-in-law, and Paranormal Privateers.

For my latest novel, Secret Supers, just published last March, I tapped Leslie McKie’s expertise.

Aside from professional editing, she’s taught middle school and disabled children. She was perfect to edit my book about seventh-grade disabled superheroes.

For my layout or proofreading edit, I use Rik Hall at Wild Seas Editing. He’s formatted all my books for print and ebook versions.’

Your Fourth Writing Post

More on plotting! I dislike any structure forcing me to write a particular plot, but I follow everything it says.

Your Last Writing Tip

Naturally, I couldn’t resist publishing another joke first. Your real, last tip comes next.

What can you learn from this lady?

1. You’re never too old to start writing.
2. Once you start writing, keep writing
3. Publish what you write. You may finally catch on.