Fiction

When to Seek a UK Literary Agent – and When to Go To The US

How To Tap The Power Of Myth To Write An Incredible Story

If you’ve ever dreamed about writing a novel that will read and loved by millions of people, then you’re in luck. There’s a hidden structure in every famous book, movie and stage performance that goes back beyond recorded history. And when you tap that mythical structure, you’ll write a story that will resonate with people around the world.

How To Create Amazing Characters For Your Novel

Many people try writing a novel to get on the best seller list, but often times they fail. Of course, there are plenty of steps to creating a wonderful novel that will get you on TV and the radio talking about how you write your amazing stories.

How To Finally Write Your Novel

Do you wish you could write a novel? Many people do. Most people even have an idea in their heads about what kinds of characters, and what kind of story will play out in their book. But for some reason, they never sit down and start writing. But if they do, they write at an incredibly slow pace, at about one page every couple of weeks.

How To Fix Your Plot Problems

You’ve been there. I’ve been there. We’ve all been there: the one-third slump, when a manuscript runs out of steam maybe thirty-thousand words in. Something about the story simply isn’t working.

So what’s gone wrong?

How to Network With Literary Agents

Loads of new writers will be frustrated by the impersonal quality of the typical agent submission procedure. You send off your stuff – spend up to eight weeks waiting to hear something – then get back a preprinted, slightly cold rejection letter. It feels so dispiriting, so unconstructive.

How to Write Successfully for Children

Nothing, but nothing, is more delightful than writing for children. And if you’ve started, as most such writers do, by writing for your own children, then you have delight piled on delight in store. Lucky you.

How Can A Literary Consultant Support Your Project?

Writing isn’t, for most authors, a full-time job. Book projects tend to be lumpy and tend to leave quite a lot of free time in between. Consequently, many writers, incuding many good ones, offer their literary skills on a consultancy basis. If you have a literary project you want help with, retaining a consultant may well be a good idea for you. But take care – this is a partnership you need to manage right.

How to Write an Elevator Pitch for Your Book

Writing is a scary old business but of all the scary things about it, perhaps the scariest is getting the concept right.

I mean, you will spend hours, days, years writing the book itself. Getting the characters right. Tweaking your prose. Labouring with the plot. But what if the whole book is just an unsaleable idea? How do you know before you start?

Writing Women’s Fiction

When new writers don’t get taken on by literary agents, they often complain, “So-and-so never even read the whole thing.” Whenever we hear that, we know that person hasn’t understood some basic truths about the whole literary business.