Release Date: 14/01/13
Publisher: Writers Digest
SYNOPSIS:
Take your first draft from so-so to sold! You've finished the first draft of your novel-congratulations! Time to have a drink, sit back...and start revising. But the revision process doesn't have to be intimidating. Revision and Self-Editing for Publication, Second Edition gives you the tools and advice you need to transform your first draft into a finished manuscript that agents and editors will fight for. Inside you'll find:
Self-editing techniques for plot, structure, character, theme, voice, and more that can be applied as you're writing to reduce your revision workload.
Methods for fine-tuning your first draft into a tight, well-developed piece of literature.
The Ultimate Revision Checklist, which seamlessly guides you through the revision process, step by step.
New Chapter! Exercises and techniques for "deepening" your work to engage and excite readers like never before.
Whether you're writing a novel currently or have finished the first draft, Revision and Self-Editing for Publication, Second Edition will give you the guidance you need to revise your manuscript into a novel ready to be sold.
REVIEW:
OK, you’ve spent quite a bit of time writing your first draft. Congratulate yourself, you’ve achieved something really special here, but lets face it, you know that you’re going to have to go through it and start editing to make it not only better but slicker. It’s a tricky conundrum about what to keep, what to cut and what to rewrite but you know what, this book is there to help.
It gives great advice, some wonderful techniques and aids you to polish the manuscript so that it shines. It’s a tool that the writer really does need and whilst you can pay out for an expert to do it, in my opinion its always best to tackle a lot of it yourself so that you get used to having things done without getting too upset. It also demonstrates that you’re willing to put in the time to make sure that your book is the best it can be. All round a great little item.
Release Date: 30/11/12
Publisher: Writers Digest
SYNOPSIS:
The Writer's Lab provides writers, journalers, and creatives (anyone with a desire to write, really) with a medium for playing around with prose, poetry, etc. There are no rules here - only creative prompts and plenty of room for writing, sketching, diagramming, and planning stories, essays, and more. The "Lab" is loaded with fun exercises that foster creativity and a love of writing, along with space to experiment with your craft and improve it. Want to plot a murder? You can do that here. Create the cast of characters for your next novel? There's room for that. Feel like designing your own planet? Try page 144. In the Lab, you can play, experiment, and explore the nuances of fiction without having to create anything more challenging than a page or two of content. It can be picked up or put down on impulse, available to inspire creative thinking and offer pure joy on demand.
REVIEW:
Sometimes you have an idea that just forms and the inner writer just can’t help but sit down and get on with this epic project that your muse is forcing you to create with her point blank shotgun. Other times you want to sit down and relax to write something but cannot for the life of you think what you want to do.
At times like this, you need to reach for this book, it has a lot of questions and exercises that get your inner writer moving which not only helps you ask the right (or write) questions but gives you a whole host of new idea’s to explore as well as helping you improve the skills that you’re developing. It’s a great little tool and to be honest when dressed up in the fun way that they’ve done with this feels more like taking a break than doing any real work. All round a cracking title and one I’ll use each time I get stuck. Great stuff.
Release Date: 27/05/12
SYNOPSIS:
"How to Blog a Book" teaches aspiring authors to create a blogged book with a well-honed and uniquely angled subject, targeted posts, and a readership large enough to get noticed by an agent or a publisher. It explains how writing a book in Cyberspace allows writers to get their book written easily while promoting it and building an author's platform at the same time. Readers will find: basic information on how to set up a blog and the essential plug-ins and other options necessary; steps for writing a book easily from scratch using blog posts; advice on how to write blog posts; tips on gaining visibility or promoting the blogged book on line and off; tools for driving traffic to a blog; information on how to monetize an existing blog into a book or other information products; and, profiles with authors who received blog-to-book deals.
REVIEW:
I’m always interested in taking the next step with writing and in a time where getting a contract is not only difficult but the author is expected to do a lot of marketing on their own, its always helpful to find ways to help get the message out there.
Whilst this title by Nina is mainly about writing a book in instalments and placing it on the web, it does carry a lot of useful advice for the writer on how to get themselves noticed as well as building up a regular readership, creating a demand for your work. The tips feel useful, the concept wonderfully explained within and when added to a friendly writing style (as if the author was giving you the inside scoop) really gives you a great beginning to get started.
It won’t tell you how to write the story (after all that’s a different kettle of fish altogether) but getting yourself out there and helping get a web presence alongside working on other essential author survival tools really helps you get that start you’re looking for.
Release Date: 25/03/11
SYNOPSIS:
Writing a paranormal novel(those with ghosts, telepaths, vampires, werewolves, fairies, witches and more) takes more than tossing in a sexy vampire or adding a magic wand. It takes an original idea, believable characters, a compelling plot, surprising twists, and great writing.
Broken down into four parts, Writing the Paranormal Novel explores:
Prewriting - what a paranormal book is, how to choose supernatural elements, deciding what impact the supernatural will have on your fictional world, research tips, and how to deal with cliches;
Paranormal Character Building - techniques for creating different types of supernatural protagonists and antagonists, supporting players, and - of course - the non-human;
World Building - developing a strong plot and complementary subplots, controlling pacing, writing fight scenes and flashbacks, using dialogue, and much more;
Submitting - tips for preparing your work for submission, polishing sample chapters, and more.
REVIEW:
As a part time writer I do spend a certain amount of my free time going through advice titles to make sure that area’s that I know I’m weak within I can improve not only through hard work but through words of wisdom from people who have trodden the same path before.
In this title by Steven Harper you get a lot of advice pertaining to the Paranormal novel and whether you like the elements or Kelley Armstrong’s Werewolves or you want Stacia Kane’s Ghosts or even perhaps the Wizarding world of JKR or Jim Butcher it helps you identify what you need to do in order to keep the rules constant so that the book wouldn’t be one singular element or character to place it within the genre.
What really works for the majority of these books from the Writers Digest, in my opinion, is the fact that they’re written clearly, they have some great pieces of advice that can take years to learn and even the pieces you do do well can be improved and worked upon almost as if you were creating a mural with words as your paint.
Finally add to this helpful information for what some would term as standard writing practices such as character growth alongside dialogue and it’s a book that has taught me more than a few lessons as well as giving me a greater understanding for why some of the writing I do works well whilst others don’t.
Release Date: 26/11/10
SYNOPSIS:
Containing comprehensive information you need, this book helps you to learn what to do and how to do it.REVIEW:
In a world of creativity there has been a lot of information as well as help out there to take your writing to another level as well as aiding you to sell your work. For years finding a lot of information has been hard as well as nearly impossible so it’s a great delight when I originally came across the Writers Market by Writers Digest. Now I find that they also have one for Screenwriters as well as one for the songwriter within.
What this title contains is a guide to helping submit not only your work but also demo’s, some tips to avoid getting ripped off as well as a great guide to finding out about royalties as well as contracts and long term prospects. Add to this some great articles about the industry by people who have been there as well as the usual useful information such as agents, contacts etc. and you’ll never leave this title far from your instrument of choice as well as recorder which makes this a book that will become indispensible and one that will be bought time and again for the Songwriter in your life.
Release Date: 30/07/10
BOOK BLURB:
"Writer's Market" provides more than 3,500 publishing opportunities for freelance writers, in addition to a completely updated freelance rate chart. The 2011 edition will be the 90th annual edition to give writers the tools they need to get published and get paid for their writing. In addition to the thousands of market listings, "Writer's Market" also includes up-to-date articles that outline how to find success as freelance writers, from how to write query letters to launching a freelance business.
REVIEW:
Apart from practicing my artwork I do have a lot of fun writing. Whilst I may not currently be up there for publication, this title is one that will prove invaluable for all authors out there. Within this book are tips on what to do before you make a sale, through to a clinic on making sure that after the time that you’ve spent polishing your novel that the query letter doesn’t let you down.
Add to the mix tips on advancing your skill set as well as marketing your work and you know that it’s a good solid reference guide that will help you take your next step. Finally with a list of publishers/agents/magazines/journals that you can then utilise to make sure that you’re writing gets to the right place and with a bit of luck you know that you’re well on the way to getting your first title on a shelf near you
It is a serious guide, so much so that if you really are serious about your writing then you can ill afford to let this book go by, if you do, the road to that gleaming contract will be a hell of a lot longer and you’ll kick yourself from not having utilised all the tricks of the trade. Writing, as many successful authors will tell you, is as much about luck as the skills that you’ve utilised and with agents/publishers looking forward. a title that may sell now may not sell in six months time, so getting it there quicker is perhaps the best thing you can do.
After all, why break your own back when this tome is pretty much the writers holy grail and map all rolled into one. Defintiely a title that will help you navigate this hidden world so much so that the trail will be a lot shorter than one that so many others have to tread.
Release Date: 30/04/10
BOOK BLURB:
The Writer's Market Guide to Getting Published, 3rd Edition , with its insider advice from successful authors and editors, gives readers a professional overview of what it takes to get their work out into the marketplace, get it published, and get paid for it. Topics featured in this book include: state of the publishing industry information; inspirational instruction to get readers motivated and writing; research strategies and interviewing techniques; tips on selling magazine articles, nonfiction books, novels, scripts, and more; instruction on self-publishing and print-on-demand options; and, cutting edge marketing and publicity guidance.
REVIEW:
Whilst having recently spent time reading titles that purport to help the author write a better novel, I’ve finally come across a guide that not only helps, but explains the various steps from finding out whether your talent lies more with magazines or with novels. Beautifully laid out, easy to follow and above all else lessons that can take years to master but presented in such a way that its easy to follow, easy to understand the goal and of course helping you find that special something deep within.
BOOK BLURB:
This thoughtful new writing resource breaks down the fiction writer's process into four levels: soul, substance, structure, and style, and shows how misunderstandings at any of these levels can result in failure, and that the key to success lies in avoiding such misunderstandings. The book explores such topics as melodrama and violence, the use of autobiographical elements, plot, point of view, character development, false starts, flashbacks, suspense, symbolism, metaphors, tone, overwriting, and more. 150 to Save a Novel offers technical solutions while simultaneously helping writers to think more deeply, more wisely, and more carefully about their choices, big and small, so they make the right choices - the choices that will result in a work of art.
REVIEW:
As an amateur writer (or rather scribbler in my case) I’m always looking for ways to try and fix the problems that I’ve hit in order to get that mythical beast, a finished first draft. So when this offering came my way I felt that I’d have a chance to see where I’ve not only made a hodge podge of the situation but to see about ways to not only patch the error but move the overall story forward.
Unfortunately what this title has to offer really isn’t what you’d expect, it felt more like a title that is being used to allow the author the chance to privately have a dig at a lot of successful authors as well as mock their writing style. Not only did this “writer” proceed to tell everyone exactly what the successful tales have done wrong but told the reader what rule’s they’ve broken and why the title isn’t really literature. The author in my opinion is unfair in their judgement and just because the things that these others have done isn’t exactly text book, writing a novel isn’t either. It’s something that has to be done by the individual and done so that what they end up with is the type of tale that they love to read.
All in all this title was less than helpful and I personally felt it was a case of sour grapes and the old adage of those who can’t, teach.
