Argh, this edit is driving me nuts! And I lied in my last post. Although is wasn’t a bare-faced lie, I miscalculated.
I thought the three scenes were approximately an equal length but it turned out that the second scene was only short - a few pages. So even though I edited the [...]

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The deadline for the anthology story is 3rd July, which gives me a week. Hmmm. Can I do it?
Spending the better part of the last week procrastinating over what changes have to be made hasn’t helped in the slightest. Even though I wasn’t feeling 100% for a few days, and I believe [...]

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The next anthology deadline is in ten days so I have to put the novel planning to one side (which is mostly finished anyway) and go into edit mode instead.
During the last workshop (in May) I received three in-depth critiques. The comments varied from one end of the scale to the other, but it’s [...]

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You are probably sick of hearing about this, but I’m happy to announce that my planning is going extremely well. My goal was to complete this task by the 19th - I have two days to go - and I’m almost there.
All I have to do is rewrite my one page synopsis. The [...]

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Yesterday, I said that I was going to start a spreadsheet and define my character’s sub plots. Well, this has proven to be difficult. In my mind I know what each character will be doing but to separate the threads like this is…challenging.
First, I had to write down the main plot. That [...]

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In planning this next novel I’ve been talking about over the past week, I’ve had several scenes rolling around in my head. One of them is where a man tumbles into a shaft and is trapped for a period of time before he’s rescued. How long? I wasn’t sure but I thought [...]

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This is step 4 - expand the previously written paragraph into a page. If done properly this could become your synopsis.
With each step I take, I discover a hole in the plot. Step 4 was excellent for bringing these holes to the surface. I found myself asking “why would that happen?”, “would [...]

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An easy way to discover sub-plots for your characters is to tell the story, in one or two paragraphs, from each of the main character’s point of view (don’t forget your antagonist). You’ll be amazed how bland their personalities were before you started this exercise.
Today, I did this for book 2 of [...]

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Being book 2 I already have a cast of characters. Yet the antagonists in book 1 were dealt with so a new antagonist has stepped up to the mark. He’s coming through as a powerful man. I think he’s going to be quite challenging to the main characters.
A person who was [...]

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Step 2 of the Snowflake Process is to write a paragraph showing the major events of the manuscript. This should be five sentences long. The first sentence sets up the story. The second, third and fourth sentences show each of the disasters. And the final sentence wraps everything up in a [...]

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