Welcome to this week’s One Thing Marketing your “One Thing” you can do this week to buildyour platform, connect with readers/reviewers, and garner some exposure for you and your latest book or WIP. Last week I talked about Finding Your Why. How did you do with the evaluation questions? This week we’ll be using those answers to craft your mission statement. The definition of a Mission Statement (as defined by Wikipedia) is a statement of the purpose of a company or organization. The mission statement should guide the actions of the organization, spell out its overall goal, provide a path, and guide decision-making. It provides the framework or context within which the company’s strategies are formulated. This is what every author should start with before they decide on writing projects, accept assignments, or begin marketing […]
Read the RestTag Archives | novel writing
Act 2: Jumping back into the suspense!
Yesterday, I addressed Scene Flow, and how in a romance scene, you might decide to develop it a bit more, making it longer. In a suspense, sometimes it’s nice to develop that before you jumpstart the action again. Today, we’re going to jump back into the suspense, drawing that element forward. Just to make sure I’m on the right track, I want to go back to my synopsis. It’s still my roadmap, even though I’ve been taking a few day trips… Luke wants his sister, who is a giant MacKenzie Grace fan to meet her, and the dinner out at the roadhouse seemed to go without a hitch…maybe no one will recognize her. But what Luke doesn’t know is that someone has recognized Kenzie – the reporter from the […]
Read the RestAct 2: How to keep the Momentum Going between chapters?
Would you like a trick to keep the momentum going between chapters? One of my biggest frustrations in writing a novel is that I can’t write it all in one sitting. Seriously. I’ve tried. I once wrote a novel in 10 days. But even then, I had to sleep, eat…maybe have a conversation with the other people in the house. Still, it was the closest thing to being able to simply step into the story and download it from my brain. I love being able to write a novel in a concentrated amount of time because the storyline is never far from me and while it’s exhausting, the story always seems to emerge with fewer jolts in the plot. However, like most authors, I have a busy schedule filled with […]
Read the RestCrafting your First Chapter for a Suspense – Application
The first chapter in a suspense novel is the most important. You want to introduce your characters, create sympathy for the, hint at the stakes or danger, and hook the reader to turn the page. How do we do this? I’m going to apply the questions from yesterday to my WIP today. Below is the link to the first scene of chapter One of Limelight, a novel I wrote for MBT teaching purposes. For your FYI, here is the Premise: She’s a movie star with a cause – fighting to stop human trafficking. In fact, she’s gone far as to write, produce, fund and star in an independent film about the horrors of human trafficking. Except – someone doesn’t want it shown, and has bad-mouthed the movie onto Hollywood’s black list. […]
Read the Rest
