Writing Fiction: Revisiting Articles From February

We’re in the final weeks of 2019, so I thought I’d revisit some of the articles posted this year. Let’s look at three articles I posted in February about writing fiction.

Writing fiction: building your novel and marketing it

If you participated in NaNoWriMo this year — kudos to you. These articles might help you with revision, and give you some ideas for marketing too.

Let’s look at them.

Writing Fiction: 3 Tips For Building A Bigger Novel

The article Writing Fiction: 3 Tips For Building A Bigger Novel covered steps you might take if you’re worried that your article is too short.

Ideas included:

• Develop a subplot—create more characters; and
• Enhance the story question.

Writing Fiction: 3 Tips To Boost A Sagging Novel

Writing Fiction: 3 Tips To Boost A Sagging Novel covered some ideas to help you to boost your novel.

This one’s my favorite:

Aim for constant surprises for your readers…

Think about jokes, and punchlines. The best jokes deliver a surprise, which makes for humor. You build readers up to expect something or other, then you deliver something unexpected.

If you’re editing your NaNoWriMo novel, think about how you could add some surprises. Consider withholding some information from readers and be sure to foreshadow your surprise.

Book Marketing: Covers, Colors And Branding

Book Marketing: Covers, Colors And Branding offered some color selection tools:

Colors are an easy way to brand your website, as well as your covers. It’s a struggle however. Your designer needs you to decide on colors, and you may even create a mood board, but the consensus of our group was that choosing colors is hard, and mood boards don’t help much.

In addition to articles about writing fiction last February, I published an article for new bullet journalers.

Bullet Journal Ideas: 3 Tips For Journaling Beginners

Bullet Journal Ideas: 3 Tips For Journaling Beginners offers tips on choosing a size for your bullet journal, as well as thoughts on getting information out of your bullet journal.

New bullet journalers often ask about “keeping” their journal notes. I take photos of them:

Whenever you create a reference item like a price list in your bullet journal, consider snapping a photo of it. I keep these kinds of photos in Evernote, but you can print out a photo, and add it a Reference Collection BuJo.