[perfectpullquote align=”full” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””] The first sentence of your book is to convince readers that they have to read the second. -Eric Simonoff. [/perfectpullquote]
WRITING
Knowing how to get inspired to write quickly will help you rediscover your creative spark when you feel stuck. Here are 8 ways to reconnect with your storytelling gift.
Related content:
5 Times you should listen to your subconscious, The Write Practice | Tweet
5 Times you should listen to your subconscious
C
reative inspiration hits us every day, whether or not we realize it. The trick is knowing when to be listening for those ideas.
- Writing About History: Truth or Dare, Women Writers | Tweet
Writing About History: Truth or Dare, 
It is rather unfair that authors of historical books are so often at the receiving end of criticism.
Related content:
Voice and vision
- All about prefixes, Writers Write | Tweet
All about prefixes, 
A prefix is added in front of a word or a root to create a new word. By adding a prefix, you enhance or change its meaning.
Related content:
The only grammar book you’ll ever need
- 4 Crucial yearnings to enrich and deepen your characters, Fiction Notes | Tweet
W
hen we develop characters, we know the drill. You must know what your character wants. But as I’ve worked on my current novel, I wasn’t getting to the heart of the character the way I wanted. So, I switched up the wording and asked, “What does this character yearn for?”
Related content:
Creating characters
- How novelists can benefit from using cinematic scene structure, Live Write Thrive | Tweet
How novelists can benefit from using cinematic scene structure, Co
ntinuity also involves how you are moving your characters around, which should be done with deliberate intention, for specific reasons. And this is where cinematic technique comes in.
Related content:
- Emotional Wound Entry: Being Publicly Humiliated, Writers Helping Writers | Tweet
When you’re writing a character, it’s important to know why she is the way she is. Knowing her backstory is important to achieving this end, and one of the most 
impactful pieces of a character’s backstory is her emotional wound.
Related content:
The emotion thesaurus
+ Related books:
- How to write dazzling dialogue
- Writing success: Your book from start to finish to publication
- Outlining your novel
- Writing deep point of view
- The art of memoir
- Reading like a Writer
- Rock your revisions
- The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide To Character Expression
SCREENWRITING
- Why haven’t you finished that script?, Going into the story | Tweet
The simple fact is an unfinished script is nothing but potential. And nothing but potential is… nothing.
- The great secret of death, Going to the story | Tweet
Just as we require Night to help define Day, and Evil to shape our perception of Good, so too Death to understand Life.
- Meet the reader: Eight screenwriting scams to avoid, Script Mag | Tweet
Screenwriting is and art and a craft, but it is also a profession – one that takes newcomers a while to get the hang of. Fortunately, there are a lot of good folks out there willing to help and guide and mentor up-and-comers. Unfortunately, there are also some not-so-good folks out there looking to take advantage of aspirants’ naïveté and inexperience.
- True Crime Writing: The devil is in the details, Script Mag | Tweet
That’s because the best true crime stories capture all aspects of a criminal, not just the ones we normally associate with predators or psychopaths. Very often, the best true crime stories illicit sympathy for a criminal’s origins, or, at least an understanding of how and why they committed their crimes. I mean, as Norman Bates famously once said in Alfred Hitchcock’s classic Psycho: “We all go a little crazy sometimes.”
Creating characters: The case against character arcs, Script Mag | Tweet
It’s funny to me that the biz is filled with individuals who purport themselves to be “open minded”; yet, when it comes to the art of storytelling, they’re the most close-minded formula freaks you’ll ever meet.
Related books:
- Super Structure: The key to unleashing the power of story
- Screenplay: The foundations of screenwriting
- Essentials of screenwriting
- Screenwriting: The sequence approach
- 33 Ways to sell your screenplay
- The eight characters of comedy
SELF-PUBLISHING
- 11 Reasons indie authors need social media, The Book Designer | Tweet
You’ve heard it a million times (or at least several hundred times): Indie authors need to use social media as part of their online marketing strategy.
- How to maximize goodreads giveaways, Author Marketing Experts | Tweet
The giveaway page is divided up into three tabs: Ending soon; Most Requested, Popular Authors, and Recently Listed. The idea is to be in one or both of those categories.
4 Lessons for authors on the current state of publishing, Jane Friedman | Tweet
An author’s online presence is more critical than ever to long-term marketing strategy.
Why does Amazon now own the ebook market?, Just Publishing Advice | Tweet
Because its competitors are totally inept!
How to use Amazon’s giveaways feature to spike sales rank and sell more books, Creativindie | Tweet
If an Amazon giveaway reaches new readers, it might be worthwhile, so I decided to test it.
Related books:
- Self Publishing: My rules to staying alive and making money
- How I sold 80,000 books
- Write. Publish. Repeat: The no-luck-required guide to self-publishing success
- Createspace & Kindle Self Publishing Masterclass
- The Self-Publishing Road Map