Tag Archives: fiction

3 Freelance Fiction Writing Jobs to Explore

By on February 18th, 2013

When we talk about freelance writing jobs, we usually focus on nonfiction writing like magazine features or business documents. We talk about that side of freelance writing more for two reasons. First, it’s where most of the jobs are. It’s also where most of the money will come from for the bulk of us. But there’s another side of freelance writing — writing fiction on a freelance basis. If freelance fiction writing is something you want to pursue, here are three freelance writing job sources you should look into. Literary Journals These are publications (in print, and in more recent …

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Posted in Fiction, Freelance Writing Jobs |

Writing a Screenplay (and Interview with Xandy Sussan) – Screenplay Ideas

By on May 5th, 2010

You might have seen me mention this before, but I’m about to start on my first screenplay. If you’ve followed my blog(s) for a while, you might also remember that I let you follow along in my process to outline two novels (as a part of a process to compare different novel outlining / drafting methods). I’m planning to do the same with the screenplay project. I know you won’t learn a lot from me in the process, other than to observe my mistakes (and hopefully a few successes along the way). That’s why I’m not going it alone. My …

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Posted in Screenwriting |

Getting Started in Writing Fiction With Evan Marshall

By on October 31st, 2009

Today in our “Getting Started” series, we’ll hear from novelist, literary agent, and nonfiction author Evan Marshall. If you’d like writing fiction to be a part of your future, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better brain to pick on the topic. I’ve personally been a big fan of his Marshall Plan for Novel Writing for years (a book, workbook, and software package are all available). If you’ve decided to pursue novel writing, I wholeheartedly recommend The Marshall Plan as a jumping off point to help you get things outlined and get a rough draft completed. In the meantime, here’s …

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Getting to Know Your Characters

By on January 22nd, 2009

I’m a big believer in planning. That’s why I went through a thorough outline for the book I’m writing, and why I outline most writing I do (from how-to articles and blog posts to press releases and white papers). You would think that character sheets, notes, outlines, etc. and then the novel outline itself would be more than enough to get a good feel for your characters–to get into their heads. What I’m finding fascinating in the drafting process is realizing that I don’t really know my characters at all–or least not as well as I thought I did. For …

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Working Title Chosen for My Current Novel

By on January 19th, 2009

If you followed my previous posts on outlining novels, you might remember that I had working titles in place for the two outlines I completed in 2008–Sarah and Three Weeks. Perhaps oddly, the novel I chose to start drafting this month was the only one without a working title. I”m happy to say I was finally able to come up with a working title for this novel – Animus. I don’t know if I’ll pitch it under that name, but having a title helps to keep me focused on the “essence” of the story–it’s simple and sums up the overall …

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Three Weeks – My Biggest Hurdle So Far

By on September 3rd, 2008

I’ve been trying to get back into the groove of working on Three Weeks (the humourous novel I’m working on for anyone new). I’ve definitely run into what’s likely to be my biggest hurdle in novel writing, with this project and future ones. I need to find a way to get past it. That hurdle is an editing obsession. I find myself second-guessing everything I write. I do think this is a bigger problem with the comedy than it will be for other things though. Frankly, it’s hard to be funny! I’m most in my comedic element when I’m just …

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One Page Down – A Few Hundred to Go

By on August 14th, 2008

I finished all of this week’s planned client work early today as expected, meaning I’m officially on a long weekend at the moment. I decided not to waste it, but to get started on two business-oriented projects – one being to start drafting Three Weeks. I’m thrilled to say that I did get started today (not a huge amount to be proud of, but getting started is half the battle with me). I set up the manuscript – took care of basic formatting, put the cover page together, and took care of all of the chapter breaks and titles. Again, …

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Character Quirks and Novel Writing Software

By on July 28th, 2008

I may be taking a few weeks off before continuing with my next novel project, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been thinking about my projects or fooling around with some interesting tools, books, and such in the meantime. So I just thought I’d share a quick run-down of some of the things I’ve been toying with recently: The Marshall Plan Software The Marshall Plan for Novel Writing was the very first novel outlining system I used (and still my favorite, despite trying two other interesting plans). Evan Marshall got in touch not long ago to let me know he …

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The Ethics of Character Blogs to Promote Your Books

By on July 28th, 2008

For one of the books I’m working on, I’ve thought about launching a character blog before I either pitch to publishers or decide to self-publish. I’d like to explore the potential ethical issues of a character blog and see what others here think about them. What is a Character Blog? A character blog is a blog authored by a fictional character – in this case, a character from a book. In some cases, the readers aren’t told publicly on the site that the author is a fictional character, and that the blog posts deal with fictional situations. In other cases, …

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Posted in Blogging, Books, Fiction, Marketing |

Three Weeks – Novel Outline Complete in Just 9 Days!!!

By on July 18th, 2008

Boy, am I happy! I was expecting my Three Weeks novel outline to be completed by Sunday evening. I thought I’d be busy all weekend with it. Instead, I finished it up today. Actually, it was all written up yesterday, but today I went back over everything, filled in holes, adjusted the order of some of the relationships, etc. for better flow. So it’s finished, and in just 9 DAYS! That includes the 78-page full outline, the abbreviated outline laid out in “scene card” format with 17 pages (actually 5″ x 8″ note cards), 16 full character sketches, character notes …

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