Now Novel
Jordan Kantey is an editor, writer and writing workshop facilitator. He’s been helping authors develop their stories for ten years. He achieved his Honours in English Literature with distinction from the University of Cape Town. He has had poems published in several journals and an anthology. He blogs about writing craft and process at Now Novel and loves to help aspiring authors reach their goals.
If you want to build a large readership it’s crucial to get plot right. If you look over bestseller lists, you might think that the secret to writing a best-selling novel is to have written one before. Yet here are some books from the past dozen years or so that broke out for their writers and some lessons we can take away from their plotting:
Are you participating in NaNoWriMo this year? November’s annual write-a-thon sees hundreds of thousands of aspiring writers attempt to write and finish their novels. If you are determined to be one of the few aspiring writers who succeed, it’s important to find consistent sources of motivation. Here are 7 ways to get and stay motivated for NaNoWrimo ( the methods apply to staying motivated to finish your book any time of year):
What if you could stop procrastinating now and start or finish writing a book? We recently asked you what your largest writing challenges were. Many of you responded that procrastination keeps you from fulfilling your dream of finishing a novel. In this post you can read 7 steps to take to end writing procrastination and become a focused, motivated writer:
What are the major challenges aspiring writers face? This is something we’ve been asking you in a poll on the blog recently and your responses have been informative and interesting. Many writers list confidence in writing as a challenge, so without further ado here are 21 quotes that will help you to persevere and finish writing your novel:
You want to write fiction that your readers will fall in love with, but what is good writing, exactly? These are seven elements of fiction that readers love:
All fiction writers want to write well. Here are 9 famous authors on writing well and mastering the art of fiction:
Story ideas lie waiting in the unlikeliest (as well as most obvious) places. If you’re wondering how to find book ideas, these 15 methods will help:
If you want to learn how to write a romance novel, it’s important to familiarize yourself with genre’s many subgenres. After deciding whether you want to write category or single title romance novels, it’s time to choose your romance subgenre:
Genres of writing serve multiple purposes. Classifying a book by genre signals to potential readers whether your story fits their reading interests. When a book has an identifiable genre, publishers can also market it to the right readers more effectively. Here are some reasons why you need to identify a genre for your book and some of the most popular fiction genres:
