Here are 10 tips to rouse you from the blankness of writer’s block and get you steaming ahead with your story or novel.

So, you have written your first novel and you want to know how to get published?

Many people have written novels, or stories but have no idea how to get published. It often seems overwhelming and difficult to understand the process. How do you get published? Is it simple, or complicated. Are publishers and agents churlish men and women who have no desire to look at your manuscript. Where can you learn how to get published?

The single, most important thing to do if you want to learn how to get published, is to first of all make sure that what you have written is indeed publishable.

Why do you want to publish your book?
There are many reasons why someone would want to get published. It can take months, or even years to get a manuscript to the point that it could be considered publishable. That’s a lot of work, a lot of writing and most likely a lot of time spent correcting and re-writing too. What better reward for your efforts could there be than to get your book published?

People write memoirs, autobiographies, or stories based on real events that happened to them. Some people wake up from a dream and have a story to tell. Perhaps you write children’s stories, or horse stories. Whatever you have written, you deserve to get your book published.

How to get published:
Before you even submit your manuscript for publication, you need to pay attention to the following:

Plot: Is it believable? (Even if you’re writing a fantasy story, it needs to make sense.) Is your story, new, fresh and not a re-write of any other novel?

Characters: Are your characters believable? Do they have weaknesses and strengths, just like real people?

Grammar and Punctuation: Yes, it’s still important to write correctly. Bad grammar and punctuation mistakes will make it almost impossible to find anyone willing to read your story.

How Do You Know if You’ve Written a Great Story?
Sometimes you get that gut feeling, “this novel is the one”. But is it? How can you be sure? Before you go to all the trouble of finding an agent to represent you (more on that later) or sending off your manuscripts to publishers, you may want to have someone else, or a few someones, take a look at your manuscript.

Mothers and brothers and grand-aunts and little sisters may be willing to read your manuscript, but that’s not really what you want. Some of the best people to read your novel are other writers. If you can take your ‘baby’ being scrutinized, tore apart and then put back together; if your skin is as thick as a crocodiles; and if you want really good, pertinent, helpful input then join a writer’s critique group. Besides, published authors have a wealth of knowledge about how to get published. After all, they’ve already done it.

Writer’s forums and critique groups are a dime a dozen. Just search online and you’ll see what I mean. So, how do you join a critique group and how do you know if they’re any good or not? A couple of good critique groups I’ve joined, that cater mainly to the Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror writers, have been Critters Writers Workshop and Online Writing Workshop.

There are other very good critique workshops and forums and it pays to look around, check them out and find one that you’re comfortable with. Not all are free (Critters is, for example, but OWW asks for a small membership fee) but you probably wouldn’t want to pay out big bucks to join a group until you’re sure it’s right for you. Many allow you access to forums or give free membership for a specific time, so you can see if you do like them.

Although it’s nice to join up with other novice writers, and critique each others work, I have found it more helpful to team up with writers who have more experience or are more accomplished than I. Why? Because you stand to learn a lot from their experience and advice. If you seriously want to know how to get published, the best way to learn is from other writers.

How to get published–the first 6 easy steps
#1 Write your novel

#2 Print out your first draft, and edit your novel. Chop out sections that don’t further the plot. Re-write scenes that don’t seem right. Deepen your characters, make them more believable. Rearrange your chapters. Make sure your plot is tight and believable. Given the circumstances, it could happen. Keep an eye on your characters, make sure you haven’t introduced one in Chapter Four and then forgotten all about him. Make every character essential to the story in some way.

#3 Type in your corrections, then print out your draft again.

#4 Edit again. This time pay particular attention to any grammatical errors; spelling mistakes; inconsistencies in the weather, the way names are spelled or location; ensure the POV is consistent throughout your novel. Trim, tighten, polish and correct.

#5 Join a critique or review group. Begin submitting your work and begin critiquing others’ work. Don’t miss this important step. You only stand to gain from it. If you want to get your book published, don’t miss this step.

#6 Change, correct, rewrite till you and those reading your novel think it is publishable.

That’s when the fun really begins. I’ll cover more specifics on the mechanics of how to get published in upcoming posts. Till then, work on that manuscript and get your work critiqued and reviewed.

How to vary scene changes

Use all of your senses. Be subtle. Sometimes scene changes need to be inconspicuous. Other times you need to shout, “We are changing scene.” Whatever method, be discreet and clever.

Lighting: Day turns to night. Stars appear in the sky. The sun shines down mercilessly. The new moon appears. Lamps are turned down. Candles are lit and there are shadows on the walls. Use light.

Weather: Is it cold, raining, perhaps even hailing? The warm rain of summer storms, or cold, sleety rain? A change in weather can denote a change in season, a change in time or changing and unusual circumstances if the weather pattern is out of place.

Years or eras: Bobby goes from childhood to adolescence. One king dies, another reigns in his stead. I was a child, now I am a grandmother. Jump from one generation to another.

Objects, film transitions: This can be effective. You watch movies, right? How often does a soft light turn into a blazing fire? Focus on one object, use its characteristics and transfer them into your new scene. A fire becomes a glowing candle. Melting snow becomes a river. A child’s face becomes a woman’s face.

Appearance and Health: Sally is young . She runs through the woods. In the next scene Sally is old and she’s walking through the woods, carrying a burden.

References to date or time: It is morning in once scene, night in the next. Thanksgiving in one scene, Christmas in the next.

Activities: Switch from a scene of people mourning their dead in the aftermath of a battle, to people dancing at a wedding. One scene ends by describing a man out hunting. In the next scene the same man has a gun, but this time he’s at war.

Interruptions: A doorbell; a tram; the sound of a phone ringing. All of these can herald a change of scene.

Space or Chapter breaks: Starting a new chapter is the easiest way to signify a change in time or character’s perspective. Leaving extra space between paragraphs can also be an effective way of showing the scene has changed.

Scene transitions should be written into the beginning of a paragraph. Remember; don’t always use the same transitional phrases or ideas. Be innovative. Be creative. Write it. If it doesn’t ‘work’ you can re-write it.

Writing Tips: Scene Changes Part 1
Writing Tips: Scene Changes Part 2

Transitions…

Move readers through time: Eliminate those boring moments. Time must be accounted for in fiction, so use transitions to move ahead a day, a month, or a season. The first sentence describes a shift from summer to fall, leaves changing color and falling from the trees. Birds migrate. Your character goes to sleep at night, and wakes in the morning.

Bridge gaps: How much time has gone by? Whose viewpoint is this? Where is it happening? This is important if you skip ahead in time, or if you tell your story from differing POVs.

Give time for reflection: Scenes move your story forward. Sometimes people need time to decide how the action relates to them. Your characters can ponder, think, dwell and reflect. They make decisions based on what has happened in your story so far. Give them the time they need to do this.

Compress Time: Some things that happen in your story need highlighting. Others do not. Going to work for a week may not need to be explained in any detail. A battle scene may need pages dedicated to its telling. Summarize in a sentence. Tell how much time has passed, describe the events of life that happen but are not crucial to the storyline.

Changes in Setting: Lead your readers to new places. Use transitions to do so. Perhaps you need to switch from a restaurant to a hotel room. Describe it. “The hotel room was…” You have switched scene.

Mood or Emotional Shifts: Something scary is about to happen? Denote it with a transitional scene change. Movies use music. You use words. Create mood changes with word pictures.

Point of View Shift: This may be one of the most common reasons for needing to write a transitional scene. Some people change POV with each chapter, others portray events through the eyes of several characters in the same chapter. This requires a transitional scene. You have to let your reader know that they’re switching to another characters point of view.

Writing Tips: Scene Changes Part 1
Writing Tips: Scene Changes Part 3

Ever wondered how smooth your scene changes are? When writing fiction longer than one scene, it is important to change scenes smoothly — otherwise you may lose your reader. While this article focuses mainly on scene changes in novels, the same advice applies to scene changes within a short story.

Chapters offer a natural scene break, but how do you handle changing scenes within a chapter; for example when you move from the house to the stable, or from the storm swept beach to the small village? What about switching POVs within a chapter? If you want to learn how to make effective scene changes, read on.

Transitions

Transitions are words and phrases that serve as bridges from one scene to the next. Transitional words provide bridges from one sentence to the next. Good transitional phrases seamlessly guide your reader from one scene to another.

What do transitions do?

Transitions help with the continuity of your story. You wouldn’t want your reader to become disoriented in the middle of your chapter, would you? If your reader needs to go back to the beginning of your chapter to understand what is happening, that could be an indication of poor transitioning techniques.

Fast changing scenes, without the appropriate use of transition, can result in your readers feeling jolted or confused and wondering what happened to the story line they were following.

Transitions connect your story and your characters. Readers know that even though you may move on to another character, or change locations in your story, you will come back. You won’t leave characters standing alone in the middle of a room on a stormy night, and never come back to tell what happened to them. They encourage your readers to have faith in you as a storyteller.

Chances are that your novel covers a span in time. You don’t show every action of every character, otherwise your book would be boring and monotonous in parts. As a writer you manipulate time and move your characters and events to new places. Transitions help you do this.

Your responsibility to your reader

Transitions don’t magically appear in your writing, or seldom do. This is the part that you, the author, have to do. Go through your book chapter by chapter, scene by scene, and determine if each scene change is smooth and clearly indicated.

Just as you strive to use proper punctuation, spelling and follow the rules of grammar, you should aim for clear scene changes. Your story might be great, plot well developed and tight, and your characters may have depth. But, if your story is poorly punctuated, words are misspelled and scene transitions are missing, you’ll lose your reader.

Setting the Scene

How can you make one scene flow into another, while still making it clear there’s been a scene change? One tip many writers use is to first describe the environment of the new scene, usually with the character in it, all in the first paragraph.

Bob Mayer (author and writing instructor) described one technique for doing this during a now no longer available Cruise and Mayer online writing workshop:

One other technique I recommend is called “set,” short for “set
the scene.” When you start a new chapter or change perspective, you have to quickly (in first two paragraphs usually) orient the reader as to:

-Where is the locale?

-When in the timeline is this, with relation to the previous
scene?

-What is the point of view, and if it is a character’s, which character?

-Who is here?

Answering those questions “sets” the scene.”

You can also separate scenes by narrative; a character’s thoughts on the previous scene, or thoughts to introduce the new scene.

Visually Dividing Scenes

Another idea is to use a visual divider when changing scenes . This is used for more abrupt scene changes such as when you transfer from one POV to another.

The standard way to mark a scene break in your manuscript is with one #. Of course you don’t notice scene changes marked that way in most published novels because the hash sign is not a mark for readers, but for editors or layout people. You use it in your manuscript to tell the editor that there’s a scene change. They then add a fancy graphic break, or include more white space.

Scene Transition — Does it Work?

A simple test as to if you have been successful in your transition between scenes is to have someone read the section in question and formulate a plot summary for that scene or chapter. If the summary includes all the elements in the series of connected scenes, then your transitions went well. If some parts of the summary are a blur, and your reader had to refer to the beginning of the chapter, or reread another earlier scene, this may mean you need to work more on your use of transition. You need to either use more transitional techniques. Or perhaps a particular scene change calls for a visual break.

In future articles I will discuss in more details transitional functions; and how you can vary the way you use transitions.

Writing Tips: Scene Changes Part 2
Writing Tips: Scene Changes Part 3

WHERE TO NOW?

You’ve read your first draft, noted changes needed and you’re ready to start editing. Where to begin?

If you have holes or inconsistencies in your plot, I’d start there. But you don’t have to. There’s just something nice about having an airtight plot though…

You could also:

1. Add setting.
2. Work on dialogue.
3. Flesh out characters, make them more ‘real’.
4. Go chapter by chapter and ‘perfect’ each one, taking it from the beginning, using your notes as a guide.

I will work on plot elements first, deleting and adding whatever is needed till the plot makes sense. Then I will most likely go chapter by chapter, working first on setting, then characters, then dialogue. I’ll make sure each scene has sufficient tension.

It’s really up to you, where you take your story from here. And I wish you all the best!

Revising Your Rough Draft Part 1
Revising Your Rough Draft Part 2

The next step, once you have the plot as air-tight as you can, is to read through your manuscript as a reader. But first, make a backup of your original manuscript and tuck it away somewhere. (You never know when you might want to resurrect a character that you’ve deleted previously.)

Read it all the way through once, without stopping to correct or edit. You can make notes as you go through it but don’t take up time editing and perfecting dialogue, adding setting details, etc. I like to print out my rough draft, double spaced, in a readable font. Some prefer to work directly on their computer. Either way works.

This is where you note down any changes you need to make to ‘fix’ your plot. Cross out paragraphs that are fillers, note characters who appear briefly in the beginning of your novel, but then disappear or characters who are so bland, they add nothing to the story. If anything comes to mind during the initial reading, write a note to yourself about it. Don’t actually make the change. That comes later.

Remember this initial read-through is to help you identify what parts of your story work, and what don’t; which characters are essential to the story, and which aren’t; identify plot holes and write notes in the margins how to fix them.

Once you have read your entire manuscript and notated what needs to be change, then you are ready to begin editing.

Revising your Rough Draft Part 1
Revising your Rough Draft Part 3

PLOT

There are as many ways to revise your first-draft novel as there are novelists. You will develop your own way, and with time it will most likely change. There are no ‘right’ ways; no ‘wrong’ ways.

How you write your novel will most likely determine how you revise your first-draft. Some are organic writers (think NaNoWriMo). They let the characters introduce themselves and tell their own story, never really sure where the story will take them. Others plot, plan, graph, chart, outline, create characters with complete a complete history, devise magnificent worlds and then tell their story. I’ve done both.

In this post I’m going to give some tips on how to revise your “organically written” first draft.

Plot: Characters can be rounded out, you can always add setting, but if your plot is flawed you have problems. One idea is to write a synopsis of your entire novel, including all elements of the plot that your reader would see. You might want to do this chapter by chapter, or simply list the plot from beginning to end. I prefer to break down my stories chapter by chapter, then merge that into an overall synopsis. It’s easier for me to work my novels that way–you may be different.

After that, put your novel aside and read through your synopsis. The plot has to be airtight. If it’s not, rewrite your synopsis till it is, highlighting anything you added, or what you need to subtract. Be brutal. Be honest. Run it by someone else if you can, let them discover holes in your story.

Your plot, all the events in your novel that lead to the final resolution, has to make sense and be believable. Yes, even Science Fiction or Fantasy plots are believable; they could happen in that world at least.

Get that down, and you’ll find the rest of the revisions are easy in comparison.

Heart trembling, wondering what sort of commendation I’d receive for the improvements I’d made on my chapter, I read through the review.

Was I in for a shock It wasn’t a scathing review, it was a soul-less piece of writing, ending with a ‘all the best with your revisions’. Basically it said that the chapter had no setting, the person couldn’t make out how old the characters were, and there was no tension or drama in the chapter at all, aside from one scene that didn’t even relate to the story. But it was all written so dispassionately, it made me feel very small indeed. Worst of all, there were several inaccuracies when re-stating the [boring, lifeless] plot, including things that I’d never written. (I checked back, just to make sure.) They didn’t even understand the [boring, lifeless] plot it seems.

I think I was more surprised than anything at receiving such a heartless, yet not unkind review. I mulled it over and over. Every now and then I’d pull it up again on screen for a quick re-read, shaking my head with wonderment as I did so.

A day or so later I finally decided that maybe they had some valid points. Of course I wondered why no one else had pointed out the same things, perhaps they were all far too kind to say anything about my writing. (Well, actually people have said plenty about my writing, it’s only that it has been a bit more personal and thoughtful.) Still, I have decided to overlook the things I don’t like about the presentation and the inaccuracies in the review, and instead take what I feel may be valid observations and work with those.

Aren’t I being very mature about that?

If the chapter is too lifeless, doesn’t have enough conflict, my characters are ageless (others had mentioned this actually, and I thought I had fixed it, heh) then maybe I can work on it more, chop out scenes, add conflict. Or, I thought, maybe I could start my book with a different, more colorful chapter.

Oh, how attached we get to our little story-lines, characters, and scenes. I have an inkling that the final product (if I ever finish) will be vastly different than what I originally wrote. Time will tell.

And I do so much prefer reading reviews of my work by people who are…well…people, not aloof, distant pen-waving, or keyboard-clicking critics. Both types of people say similar things, its just that warmth and friendliness makes me feel better about what is being said.

I will aim to remember than whenever reviewing the writing of others.

Yes. I have been. And too busy to do many corrections, although I’m chipping away at my current novel WIP.

Study, and improve your style, and your writing!

One thing I have noticed, since critiquing and receiving reviews and critiques, is that my writing style has improved. For example, several people mentioned that I use adverbs and adjectives too freely, instead of describing by actions, speech, interaction, etc.

Case in point,
“He was really mad!”

“He strode across the carpet, hands in pocket, head bowed. Sweetling sat still, she’d seen Macho do that once before, and she still bore the scars from it.”

I try to strip my chapters of all ‘ly’ words. (I end up leaving a few because they ’sound right’.) I am attempting to show instead of tell. These are such basic lessons in the art of writing, yet if you don’t know it you won’t do it. You’ll tell. And tell. And tell.

I sometimes think of all the new, or wannabe writers. I was/am one. A word of advice. You HAVE to study and learn. Inspiration alone is not enough. You may be an incredibly creative writer, you may be able to catapult people to new worlds with a few dashes of your pen. But, sadly, if you don’t get the mechanics of writing down–if you don’t study, learn, and improve on your style–they won’t stay there.

Having your work critiqued is a good way of showing you what areas you need to concentrate on. Once you narrow down one, or two, or three areas; start studying. Improve. Don’t try to work on every area at once. Instead concentrate on one thing at a time. Read, re-work your manuscript, and progress!

This tip may not be helpful to all, so take it or leave it, or adapt it. I received critiques on one chapter. Rather than reworking that chapter, taking into account the areas it needed improving, and then re-posting it, I instead applied the same counsel to the next chapter. My goal was to see if I could post the next chapter and not have the readers comment, “Oh, you use way too many adjectives…”

My theory is that if I can get one weak area out of the way, I can give people a chance to look for other flaws in my writing.

“WIP”; work in progress. A progressing work.

It is soooo much easier, though, to write “He was really mad.”