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The 6 Golden Rules Of Writing Legal Fiction

January 7, 2019 by Fred Johnson Leave a Comment

The 6 Golden Rules Of Writing Legal Fiction

John Grisham may be one of the wealthiest writers alive today. He’s spent almost every one of the past twenty-five years with a book in the bestseller charts, and for a long time his was the only voice garnering attention in the growing world of legal fiction. Those days, however, have come to an end. Legal fiction is no longer a niche subgenre dominated solely by one man – on the contrary, …

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Do You Really Need To Start At The Beginning?

August 15, 2018 by Robert Wood Leave a Comment

Do You Really Need To Start At The Beginning?

One of the biggest hurdles when improving a story is moving past its original form. While authors instinctively set to work improving character, dialogue, description, action, and voice, most consider the first plot structure they set down on the page to be the definitive version. As a consequence, important elements of a story are improved, but they all remain married to the most basic version of …

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How (And When) To Stop Front-Loading Your Story

March 21, 2018 by Robert Wood 6 Comments

How (And When) To Stop Front-Loading Your Story

Editing your story is, if we’re honest, more than half the battle of completing it. The first draft is a rush of creativity, but it’s in the editing that you turn it into a well-oiled machine that (crucially) is more concerned with entertaining the reader than acting as an outlet for the author. The technical, word-by-word editing is, if not easy, at least approachable. You can break it down …

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5 Reasons Readers Give Up On Books… And How To Avoid Them

March 19, 2018 by Rebecca Langley 26 Comments

5 Reasons Readers Give Up On Books… And How To Avoid Them

People give up and put books down for any number of reasons, but if we understand the most common causes, we can intercept them during the writing process. As writers expend all their energy actually writing the book and expend all their sleep freaking out about publication routes, it’s easy to lose sight of this one pressing question: are people going to want to read this book all the way to the …

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How To Write About Video Games In Fiction

November 15, 2017 by Fred Johnson 2 Comments

How To Write About Video Games In Fiction

No creative medium can boast as explosive a conception as video games. While the earliest video game was created in 1947, the industry didn’t really get started until Pong burst onto the scene in the 1970s. Since then, it’s been one monumental success after another and, today, video games are a multi-billion-dollar industry, are popular across a whole range of demographics, and have spawned a …

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Adding A ‘B Plot’ Is The Simple Way To Improve Your Story

November 8, 2017 by Robert Wood 8 Comments

Adding A ‘B Plot’ Is The Simple Way To Improve Your Story

Sometimes, two plots are better than one. As much as brevity and (comparative) minimalism generally reveal the best form of a story, there are occasions where your central plot will benefit from being paired with a back-up narrative. These secondary narratives, generally less complex than the main narrative and focused on supporting characters, are often known as the ‘B plot’, and they may be the …

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