I set myself the goal of reading and reviewing 52 writing guides over 52 weeks. The initial year has sailed on by, and my last post was so long ago I couldn’t find it on my dashboard. I want to
Read moreDiary of a Novel: plotting Acts I, II and III
I picked up the story bible for The Beast Within at the weekend and was mortified to see I’ve not done anything practical since the end of May. Saying that, I have been reading. I’m still on Writing the Killer Mystery by Ron D
Read moreDiary of a Novel: plotting the murder
I haven’t been completely idle since 10 June when I last updated the novel-writing diary. Aside from completing three large editing projects for a client, I’ve also started work on a pocket novel and joined a new writers’ group. Yesterday
Read moreDiary of a Novel: advance character work done
Over the past two weeks, including the weekend, I’ve been quite busy doing a client edit that turned into a major rewrite. Writing uses up most of my creative energy. I gave up teaching because that depleted my supplies too.
Read moreDiary of a Novel: special characters – part 2
Okay, at the start of this week I’d hit a brick wall and was struggling with whether or not to have a “supporter” character in my story. I’ve been playing around with this all week, shuffling between various scenarios. Could
Read moreDiary of a Novel: special characters – part 1
Now, when I say “special” I don’t mean “special” as such, I mean “other important characters not mentioned already”. According to Ron D Voigts and Writing the Killer Mystery, these “special” characters consist of the following: sidekick opponent supporter My “sidekick”
Read moreDiary of a Novel: the suspects
The intention was to take The Beast Within away with us on our recent holiday and do some work here and there … Unfortunately, we were so busy enjoying ourselves that the story was completely neglected. Fortunately, before we went away, I
Read moreDiary of a Novel: the killer
I had a lot of fun working on my killer this week. Wednesday was the day I did this work, and I didn’t even reach the end of the chapter in Writing the Killer Mystery for creating the killer. I
Read moreDiary of a Novel: the victim
Details of the victim have been percolating in the back of my mind this week, while I did other stuff. When I finally came to sit down and write the ideas up, I was surprised at how much I’d learnt
Read moreDiary of a Novel: the sleuth
I didn’t get very much work done on the novel at the weekend as we did shopping and gardening on Saturday, the poet had a gig Saturday night, and we were out all day Sunday, walking. Saying that, I did
Read moreDiary of a Novel: Great beginnings
I didn’t do any more work on the novel on Tuesday, so I wrote the grand total of 197 words, bringing my running total to 464. Instead, I carried on with the edit that I’d started on Monday. I worked
Read moreDiary of a Novel: 2 April 2019
Having abandoned – temporarily – Catch the Rainbow, yesterday I started work on The Beast Within: a Marcie Craig mystery. Marcie Craig is the main protagonist and amateur sleuth in my first novel Night Crawler. Whereas that novel was set
Read more