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Stage Direction in Your Novel
Make Your Writing Tighter, part 1 Too much stage direction in your novel can be information overload. You might have heard the phrase ‘make every word count’. And you might have heard that ‘tight writing is good writing‘. But what do these phrases actually mean? What constitutes ‘tight writing’? And…
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What Are Beta Readers?
(And Why Should All Novelists Use Them?) Find out what Beta Readers do, how much they cost, and where to find them! What is a Beta Reader? Put simply, a beta reader is someone who will read your book before it is published and give you their opinion. Generally, they…
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Is Perfection Achievable?
Do you want to know how to write the perfect novel? All of my clients want to publish books that are as good as they can possibly be. You have put hours and hours (and hours!) of work into your book. You have probably invested a huge amount of emotional…
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What Even is DIALOGUE? What is dialogue in a novel? It’s how you represent the way your characters are speaking. In books, it tends to be encased within either ‘single quotes’ (common in the UK), or “double quotes” (common in the US). There are many rules relating to dialogue and…
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MS Word Shortcut Keys
A list of the most commonly used Microsoft Word Shortcut keys. This post is also available as a download. When you’re in the midst of typing your book, you will find yourself using the same commands over and over again. If each time it takes you a few seconds to…
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What is Dialogue Within Dialogue?
Dialogue is just another word for speech. Generally, dialogue is separated from standard text using inverted commas (also known as speech marks). These can be either single ( ‘ and ’ ) or double ( “ and ” ). Which style an author chooses is down to personal choice, although…
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What is Phonetic Dialogue?
Is it OK to write speech phonetically (phonetic dialogue) to illustrate an accent or lisp? The answer, as with pretty much everything else, is ‘it depends’. There is a time and place for differentiating characters based on how they speak – for example to indicate a different social background or…
