Category: novel planning
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Friday’s Findings: Ask Why
Why Writers Should Ask “Why” Before Writing a Novel Before a writer sketches an outline, builds a character profile, or writes the first sentence, there’s a question worth pausing to ask: Why am I writing this novel? Most of the time, I write for fun. I never think about the why. But I keep coming…
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Test Your Novel’s Potential
“Is my novel idea worth pursuing?” How can you know you will fall in love with your novel without spending hours of writing, stringing together thousands of words, and creating dozens of scenes before realizing it doesn’t work? Try this: Jessica Brody, author of Save the Cat Writes a Novel, recommends just writing the single…
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Some books on writing craft
The Happy Writer by Marissa Meyer is a warm, encouraging guide that helps writers rediscover joy in the creative process by balancing productivity with self-compassion. Through practical advice and personal insights, Meyer reminds authors that success comes not just from word counts, but from cultivating happiness in their writing life. I’ve read two different fiction…
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Friday’s Findings: Your Novel’s Word Count Breakdown
Have you ever asked yourself, “Is my middle too saggy?” Of course, I’m talking about the first draft of your novel. I have several novels in the first draft stage, and I plan to revise them over the next couple of years, Lord willing. Here’s the thing: before I start rewriting them, I want to…
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Friday’s Findings: Should You Add a Prologue?
Five years ago, I did a series called Writing Style Outcasts. It’s been a while since I’ve talked about one of these misfits of grammar. I’ve discovered the question is not why shouldn’t I use them but is when to use them. I’d like to add prologues to these misfits of the writing craft. A…
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Friday’s Findings: Using Scrivener’s Snapshot Function to Revise
There are a million ways to revise. And there are a million ways to use Scrivener. For my fiction writing, Scrivener offers flexibility and customization. I have found it malleable to fit whatever writing project I am working on at the time. If you haven’t used it, you would too, I bet. No, I’m not…
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The Final Destination
How I’m Designing Resolutions for Every Character in My Series This past week, as I was rewriting scenes for my upcoming novella, Normous, I realized something: I needed to make sure I kept track of where my characters end up at the end of this series. Was I smart enough to keep track of the…
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My 50k Novel in 30 Days: Final Daze
During my last three days of doing this unofficial NaNoWriMo, I wondered about my writing craft process for the future… Day 28 It is a sad day for me. The website for NaNoWriMo has vanished. Ironic it happened while I’m in the last week of one of the best 50k words in 30 days I’ve ever done.…
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Friday’s Findings: My 50K Novel Week 2
As an alternate to NaNoWriMo, I’m doing a 50K word rough draft of a novel in 30 days. Here’s how the second week went: Day 8: My city has the best coffee shops. I’m sitting in one before I go to work and I’m going to outline some unfinished scenes. I swore I wouldn’t do…
Andrew M. Friday 