Ep. 7 | Insider Secrets to Getting Ahead in Your Writing

Not everything you learned in school is wrong...except that "adverbs are bad verbs." 😂 The writing world is extremely different than the educational writing world, so in this episode, Serious Writer co-owners discuss the non-academic side of writing.

1. Go to a writers conference. Now!
2. Read in your genre and subgenre and learn the style of that genre.
3. Get the resources you need from the beginning. Check out the emotions thesaurus & Story Trumps Structure)
4. Your 1st book might not be published. Common fear: I won’t have another story after this one.
5. Learn the rules first before you break them.
6. Know how to structure a story. Modern story is based on the 3-act structure. Act 1 is short. Act 2 is rising action over the middle and it’s longer; character development. Climax. Act 3 is descending action. [Fantasy: Hero’s Journey of the 3-Act Structure.]
7. Set a regular writing time period or a daily word count. Earnest Hemingway - wrote 500 words a day. Stephen King: 2000 Jack London - 1500. Mark Twain - 1400. Michael Crighton - 10,000 words - Jurassic Park. Suggestion - start lower until you’re consistent.
8. Just write and don’t edit.
9. Write in scene, not sequence.
10. Know the word count for your genre.
11. Write flash fiction.

Tools: Word Scrivener

Resources:

SW Fiction Proposal

The Emotions Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman

Story Trumps Structure by Steven James

Write from the Middle by James Scott Bell