Posts by Steven Drennon
"Don't judge a book by it's cover." We've all heard that, but how many of us actually adhere to it? I believe that is a totally antiquated statement, especially these days when more and more books ...
One of the first things you should consider is whether or not you are going to have to pay anything to this local printer in order to get your book "published". If so, then you may want to consider...
Does anyone have any effective writing techniques or exercises that you use to help you focus more on showing the reader what you mean rather than just telling them about? I know I often find mysel...
I don't believe there is any way that anyone outside of Amazon could truly answer this. The best anyone could hope for would be to guess or speculate, and that's not what this site is about. As fo...
One thing to consider is just how important the setting is to the story. If there are key aspects of the setting that factor into the story, then that could enhance the actual story. For example, "...
As mentioned previously, if two or more contributors are considered as co-authors, they share in all revenue generated from the work. The exception would be if they had signed some form of agreemen...
Think of your story as separate scenes. Your idea about writing a novel of interconnected short stories is basically the same thing. Each chapter is a different scene, or a different short story, i...
Publishers can do all of the things you identified in your list for you, but the degree of commitment that they apply to each will vary based on a number of factors. If they believe that you have a...
To expand on the comment by John Smithers, one of the advantages of an epic fantasy is the grand scale upon which your story is built. Usually an epic fantasy either contains a lot of characters or...
One of the things that first came to mind on this is to address it the same as any research you would do for any other novel. If you write a book about a French character, you may have to look up c...
There was a recent question that caused quite a stir around here, not so much for the question itself, but more the purpose of the question. That aside, there was a valid question being asked, and ...
This is one of those questions where everybody just has to go with their own personal preferences. My last choice would be trying to dictate. I tried Dragon Diction as well, but as you have already...
If you create a user account at Critique Circle, you can gain access to a number of online tools they have available specifically for writers. Below are some examples and the description they provi...
There are a lot of different ways that people can invoke fear or intimidation tactics, but ultimately you will have to decide what works best for your story. A lot of times a group or individual wi...
This is one of those questions where everyone is going to have a different opinion, so ultimately the final answer is up to you. We can help you consider options, but you have to make the final cho...
Lauren has some very good advice there, but the one thing I would add would be a timeline. If the stories you already have are tied together in any way, then try to lay them out on a timeline to sh...
I believe it depends on whether you are trying to be personable or professional. If you want to have the reader feel that they are reading comments directly from you, in a personal manner, then the...
I saw this question posted in another forum, and it didn't have any responses, so naturally I decided to bring it over here. :) I realized, 80% of the way through my first draft, that I don't h...
I have a setting in one of my stories where a character has to describe a very long series of events, giving the history of an object so that others know more about it. This not only provides the r...
I know this will vary depending on the type of the story and the characters involved, not to mention the location itself. What I am looking for is some kind of guideline for identifying different a...
Someone on another forum asked for advice on a sentence she was writing, so I thought I'd share it here and see what kind of responses we could get. The sentence in question is marked by italics. (...
Normally this kind of statement would appear by itself at the beginning of your material. With a print magazine, there are a couple of options. One option would be to place it as small print in a f...
Although the use of "had had" is grammatically correct, it doesn't read well and seems awkward to me. Take for example the following sentence: I had had enough of this nonsense and was ready t...
The fastest way to take advantage of the current publicity that is focused on Steve Jobs would be to self-publish your book. You can go to Amazon Kindle to get it out as an e-book and have it avail...
Does anyone have any suggestions on where to go to get some ideas on different types of monsters that can be created for a fantasy novel? I'm not talking about different variations of zombies or va...
