Get Ready For NaNoWriMo
NaNoWriMo Novel Writing Techniques
National Novel Writing Month, NaNoWriMo, encourages ordinary people to write a novel during the month of November. The novel must be at least 50,000 words in length, which is short by most novel writing standards. This feat can be accomplished by writing only 1667 words daily for thirty days. Everyone who reaches the 50,000 word goal is considered a winner. I have participated in and won at NaNoWriMo nine times, from 2001 through 2009. On this page I make suggestions and link to sites that ca...

Novelists: Do You Plan Your Plots in Advance?
To Plan or Not to Plan
I used to think I was an organic novelist, who got an idea and developed it while writing. Unfortunately, that meant I wasn't really a novelist at allmy inspiration petered out and I rarely finished anything. And when I did, it didn't feel right. It was just a sequence of things happening, rather than an actual plot. Finding Larry Brooks's blog changed my life, as it taught me about novel structure. Then I came across Randy Ingermanson's Snowflake Method of planning a novel and it made so mu...

How to Start a Novel
Practical Tips on How to Start a Novel
Stuck on how to start a novel or, more specifically, the first or opening scene? Enclosed are some writing tips to ensure that you Start your Book off the right way. Your first paragraph needs to captivate your reader immediately. If you don't manage to hook your reader very early on, the rest of your story will likely go unread. There are at least five points that the opening of your work should cover: what and who the story is about, where and when it is located, and why it has been writte...