Jenny’s Writing Resources
Links to writing resources I’ve found helpful.
Writing Fiction – Getting Started
Books I’ve found helpful:
For great pointers on contemporary writing style – Renni Browne & Dave King’s Self-Editing for Fiction Writers
The First Five Pages by Noah Lukeman
Rivet Your Reader with Deep Point of View by Jill Elizabeth Nelson
Write Your Novel From the Middle by James Scot Bell
For describing emotional reactions – Angela Ackerman’s The Emotion Thesaurus
Some other recommendations:
Structure or Plot
Story Premise – 6 essential elements (K M Weiland)
Endings - Deliver the Payoff (The Editor’s Blog)
And why it might go wrong – The Story’s Subtext (Jamie Gold)
Character
Creating Sympathetic Characters (Jason Black)
Showing Deep Emotion – How to Use Layers (Jamie Gold)
Finding the Right Name (K.M.Wieland)
Some more considerations in Naming - pitfalls to avoid (Io9)
Point of View
How to pick the right PoV for your novel
Omniscient Point of View is not popular with readers, editors and publishers
The pros and cons of Omniscient PoV (Brian Davies)
And another take on it (Charlie Jane Anders)
World Building and Setting
World building – Creating Worlds (Jeanette O’Hagan)
Show Don’t Tell
Adding Power to Blah (Margie Lawson)
Writing a Series
The dos and don’ts of Writing a Series (Jami Gold)
Multiply the Magic: On Writing Series (Jeanette O’Hagan)
Five Warning Signs that Readers Won’t Read Your Sequel (Christine H.)
General Tips & Editing
Lucy’s links – weasel words, first page, motivations and more (Lucy Thompson).
Things to avoid – overuse of adverbs:
The Dreaded Adverb Problem (Tom Pollock)
Why You Should Shoot Adverbs on Sight (Mary Jaksch) – last paragraph gives a good test of when an adverb is necessary.
Is this scene necessary? When to Cut that Scene (Chris Winkle)
Writing Diaglogue – The Seven Deadly Sins (Susan DeFreitas)
And More:
Writing Poetry
Four formatting tips for Word Press – Block Quotes; Preformatted Text; Indents and Outdents; and Extraline Breaks.
Finding Rhymes Rhyme Zone
The Writing Journey
Advice to start with – perfect one liners (Buffy Greentree)
Three Tips to Rev up Your Writing Career (Ali Stegert)
Why writing can be like climbing Mount Everest – Base Camp (Jeanette O’Hagan)
What type of writer are you – Are you a plotter, pantser or tweener?
Overcoming Procrastination
Fail-safe guide to overcoming procrastination (Gail Brenner)
Causes of Writer’s Block – Fear (Brian Clark)
Looking after yourself as a writer
Adele Jones and Pamela Heemskerk give some great advice about posture, eyestrain etc in this series of articles in ACW:
Publishing & Marketing
Cover Design
Can you judge a book by it’s cover? The importance of cover design.
Submitting to Publishers
Manuscript Format
Always check the publishers guidelines and stick to them! Here are some general guidelines
How to Format Your Novel For Submission (Editor’s Blog)
Manuscript Format Graeme (Shimmin)
What about self-publishing?
Belinda Pollard busting 3 myths about self-publishing.
How does SP work? (Cecily Paterson)
Website
Elements of a good author website.
Readers’ Welcome – reader friendly author websites (Jeanette O’Hagan)
If you decide to use WordPress – difference between .org & .com (Sarah Gooding)
Social Media
What is Good Reads – my take.
Good Reads for authors – 8 tips.
Book Reviews
Reviewing Ethics (Iola Golton)
Other
Where to look for images
12 Best Places to Get Free Images for Your Site
Software
25+ Pieces of Writing Software
Useful Websites
K M Wieland – Helping Writers Become Authors
The Passive Voice: A Lawyers Thoughts of Authors and Publishing
The Write Flourish - look at recent blog posts for writing tips
Australasian Christian Writers - use search to access archives
Image by Jeanette O’Hagan (all rights reserved)
Thanks for compiling that list Jenny. I’m forever finding great articles and then forgetting to bookmark them properly. I’ll bookmark your page now. Thanks too for the shout out
I really like the Browne and King book you mentioned. For plot, I also really like James Scott Bell’s book ‘Plot and Structure’.
Thanks for dropping by Nola. Bell’s book is one I’ve heard about but haven’t read yet – so I’ll bump it up on my To-Read list.
Thanks for the links, Jenny. Good to see so many interesting ones in one place.