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START YOUR NOVEL: A Fiction Notes book
My latest Fiction Notes book is now available! Six Winning Steps Toward a Compelling Opening Line, Scene and Chapter You want to write a novel, but you don’t know where to start. You have a great idea and—well, that’s all. This book explains the writing process of starting a novel in six winning steps. CHAPTERS…
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Starting a New chapter: Defeating the Blank Page
Your novel is progressing nicely and you finish a chapter. But then, the next chapter is calling and you procrastinate, you read blogs, you do laundry, you AVOID. How can you get started on that next chapter? Sensory details. I like to imagine where my character is in the next chapter, then close my eyes,…
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Trying 12 Opening Lines
Today, I am working on rewriting the opening chapter of my story. Many authors say they must go back and rewrite the first chapter because they didn’t know what it needed until it the last chapter was written. The last chapter must be set up in the opening chapter, it must be the inevitable result…
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A Typical Chapter
My novel is growing chapter by chapter. Getting a chapter done. Here’s a look at a typical process for writing a chapter of a book. First, I look at the plot synopsis that I have already written. It tells me the bare bones of what happens in this chapter, but often few specifics. I have…
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Opening Lines, Scenes, Chapters: Best, Worst, Fix Them, Write Them
Today is a compilation of previous posts on the topic of how to open a story or novel. These are among the most popular posts here on Fiction Notes, so I gathered them in one place for you. 12 Ways to Open Your Story: The Story in Miniature First Page: An Editor Discusses Why It…
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9 Tips on Opening Lines & Opening Chapters of Your NaNoWriMo Novel
If you’re doing NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month, you’ll be starting at midnight tonight or first thing in the morning. You’ll be opening your story with a great scene, right? Here are resources for those first lines, opening chapters of your novel. 10 Opening Line Strategies, illustrated with the top 100 opening lines of…