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Nick Bailey

Contributor

Nick Bailey writes about anything and everything in the realm of writing and publishing. From articles about honing your craft to launching your book, Nick aims to provide valuable insights and practical tips to the NowNovel community in his posts. Aside from stories, Nick enjoys hiking, electronic music, and filling up his personal cookbook with new recipes.

Recent posts

Character description: 7 ways to avoid weak imagery

Strong character description is key to creating vivid and realistic characters. We may be tempted to reach first for obvious elements of physical description, such as eye and hair color. Yet strong imagery tells us more about a character's personality, quirks, strengths and flaws. To avoid weak ...

August 14th, 2018

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How to write a rough draft: Finish your novel faster

In learning how to write a rough draft, there's no one-size-fits-all approach that suits every writer equally. This being said, writing a story draft as quickly as possible helps. Working quicker for the first pass helps to keep you from becoming discouraged or losing interest in your ...

July 26th, 2018

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How to write a rewarding series arc

Structuring a story is challenging, especially when your story spans multiple books (or, in the case of TV, episodes). Read on for ideas to make your series arcs - of character and plot - rewarding: 1. Outline ideas for individual books' arcs A writing project as large-scale as a seri...

May 7th, 2018

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Writing techniques to polish your prose

Writing techniques make individual authors' styles distinctive. From poetic devices (such as metaphor and simile) to narrative strategies, writers use various literary techniques and in doing so create their (often unmistakable) personal styles. Here are writing techniques you can use to elevate...

April 12th, 2018

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How to build narrative pace using grammar

There are multiple factors that determine narrative pace, the rate at which your story's narrated action unfolds. Tone and word choice are two factors. Yet having a good command of grammar helps too. Try these tips to build better pacing: 1. Master the participial phrase A participle is a ...

April 5th, 2018

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Archetype examples: Write great characters from universals

Archetypes are useful for imagining diverse, interesting characters. Literature is full of jesters and jokers, lovers, warriors, wise sages, and fools. Some of these are literal (the fool is a literal court jester who entertains a king), others metaphorical (the 'class clown' who loves to entert...

March 29th, 2018

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