2k to 10k: Writing Faster, Writing Better, and Writing More of What You Love

A boredom check is where I think through my plot, imagining the story in my head as though it were a movie. There's no sound or dialog; I just go through the story, scene by scene, searching for slow spots, things that don’t make sense, or anywhere that seems to lag. If I can’t visualize something or I skip a scene, I stop and figure out why.

The longer I wrote, the faster I wrote, and, I believe, the better I wrote.

The point I’m trying to make here is that when you let your characters make their own choices, they become real people who can tell you where they need to go. By making your character’s decisions and needs part of your plot right from the beginning, treating them as active participants in the novel rather than passengers on a rollercoaster to the c

Write out a scene list. This one is a little odd. Here, I take that plot I wrote out at the end of step 3 and break the action down into scenes. Next, I group these scenes into chapters to make a nice little list. For example, the first chapter of The Spirit Thief would look like this: Chapter 1 Eli charms his way out of prison The king of Mellinor

That’s what Step 0 is about. You don't need to have a plot or characters or even an ending at this point, but you do need a certainty that the idea floating in your head is something that will not only hold your interest not only through the time it takes to write, edit, and polish a manuscript, but will, once finished, do whatever it is you want t

If I had scenes that were so boring I didn't want to write them, then there was no way anyone would want to read them. This was my novel, after all. If I didn't love it, no one would.

Make a time line. I didn't have time lines for the first 4 Eli novels and OMG did it bite me in the ass. Lesson finally learned, I now make time lines not just for the events of the novel itself, but the important bits of history before it as well. I especially make sure to note the relative ages of all my characters and how long everyone's known e

the first question you should be asking yourself isn’t “Is this a good book?” but "Is this really the story I want to spend my time on?"

Ch 1 (7452) D gets Caldswell tip from Anthony D goes to starport, checks the tip, sees the Fool D has her interview, impressive, gets the job Basil takes D on the tour, we meet R, job is laid out