Grammar Tips For Writing Fiction

If you have stumbled on to this page because you are a writer who is looking for ways to improve, then we have a few things in common. I am a writer and I am always looking for ways to improve my storytelling abilities.

When I first began to realize my dream of becoming a published author, I dived right in with an idea for a story that I had come up with years ago. I wrote a few chapters and then stopped to read them. I noticed right away that some of my sentences did not read well, and I decided that it was time to do a little research.

My search confused me even more. Passive voice, reducing the amount of adverbs used and the proper use of commas had my head spinning. I had been out of school for many years and the only terms I could remember the meanings of were nouns, verbs, and adjectives. How could I attempt to reduce the amount of adverbs I used if I did not even know what one was?

This is when I stopped all my attempts to improve my writing and purchased a few good books on grammar and style. I did an intense study on grammar, learned the jargon and then practiced what I had learned.

So, what is an adverb? An adverb is a word that modifies a verb, adjective, another adverb or a clause. In my example below, the word slowly is the adverb and it modifies the verb walked.

Perry and Melissa walked slowly down the path.

It is not wrong to use an adverb and when used sparingly, it can add variety to your sentence structure. When I am in the editing/revising process, I pause when I come to an adverb that I have used and ask myself if I could come up with a better way to say the same thing. With the above example the solution is easy. Walked slowly can be replaced with a more expressive word for walked that means to walk slowly.

Perry and Melissa strolled down the path.

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It's not difficult to find information on writing novels. It's not hard to find novel writing classes and novel writing books. But it IS difficult to find a full, step-by-step novel writing system that will lead you all the way from idea to completed book. It IS especially difficult to find an affordable such system.

Most novel writing programs either give you only part of what you need to know to write a good novel, or they cost hundreds of dollars or more.

Author Andrea Rains Waggener saw this void in the novel writing information arena and decided to put her expertise to use. She wrote a set of e-books that lays out a complete, step-by-step plan for planning and writing a novel.

The Novel Writing Made Easy-How To Plan A Novel That Practically Writes Itself writing system is not just one, but two e-books. One e-book is a 184-page information packed instruction manual for planning and starting your novel. The other e-book is 97-page taskbook that walks you through the actions you must take to put into practice what you learned from the manual. The Novel Writing Made Easy System is an organized, easy-to-follow system that can teach anyone to turn an idea into a completed novel.

Written in an easy-to-follow, conversational style, the Novel Writing Made Easy-How To Plan A Novel That Practically Writes Itself writing system is a quick read. It is also a fun read.

Andrea, whose first novel was picked up by one of the biggest publishers in the world, Bantam Dell, admits that it took her awhile to develop a novel writing system that works. She's sharing her system, she says, because she doesn't want other new novelists to struggle as she did.

If you want to get a look at the kind of information Andrea has to offer, sign up to receive her two free reports, The 18 Most Common Writing Mistakes And How To Avoid Them and A Dozen Fiction Writing Mistakes And How To Sweep Them Out Of Your Story and get her Weekly Writing Tips-Ideas And Exercises To Help You Be A Better Writer. They're worth giving up your e-mail address for.

The Novel Writing Made Easy-How To Plan A Novel That Practically Writes Itself writing system covers these aspects of putting together a novel:

* Brainstorming every twist and turn of your story's action
* Developing a compelling plot
* Creating powerful subplots that will make your novel rich and engaging
* Developing the back story that will make your characters every bit as real as you or me
* Creating complete main character sketches and a minor character sketches that will bring your characters to such vivid life that you AND your reader will feel like they're real people
* Creating a compelling overall novel setting that will make your novel stand out heads above your competition
* Determining what research you need to do, and how to do just the right amount (not too much or too little)
* Designing the scenes of your novel in a way that will assure that your novel's pacing will be just right
* Writing in a way that evokes all the senses so your reader will be drawn into your novel's world
* Choosing the best words to conjure the image you want to create so that your writing is polished and professional
* Creating a perfect balance of details, enough but not too much, so that your reader always has a clear picture of your scenes but is never bored
* Writing a editor- or agent-grabbing query letter for your novel
* Writing a 15- to 25-page synopsis of your novel that will tease editors or agents just enough that they'll HAVE to see the rest of your novel

Although saying that your novel will write itself if you follow the steps in the e-books is a bit of a stretch, the process does make writing a novel MUCH easier. Andrea admits that her process isn't as quick as some online novel writing e-book authors promise (you probably won't be able to do all she suggests you do in 30 days), she says that her system will take you to a quality book.

Although I haven't put her system to the test yet, the step-by-step plan makes perfect sense. For the first time, I can imagine myself getting through the complexity of writing something as big as a novel.

The e-book set has only one minor drawback. It will be tough for you to know if you're on track with the tasks you're doing in the taskbook without getting feedback. Andrea, however, does have a coaching system that can help with that, and she provides information about it in the e-books.

The feedback problem aside, the e-books have enough top-notch information to make it well worth their price. The bonus material, which include several writing books and books to help you improve your creativity, are impressive.

At $47, the e-book set and its bonuses is a great deal. You'll definitely get your money's worth. The e-book has an open-ended guarantee so you don't take any risk.

All in all, I highly recommend the Novel Writing Made Easy System to any who has ever thought about writing a novel.

Novel Writing Made Easy-How To Plan A Novel That Practically Writes Itself

Writing a novel begins with a simple idea. That story idea is what will lead you to your story plot, which is the core of what you need for writing a novel.

Plot is simply the plan of your story. It's the movement of the people in your story through situations and through settings to get to certain goals.

Some novel ideas are about a situation. Some ideas about a character. No matter where your idea starts, you must turn the idea into a plot if you want enough story for writing a novel.

How do you do this?

By asking questions.

The two questions you want to ask to transform an idea into a plot are:

1. What if?

What if is the seed question to every novel plot. To get a full, complex plot, you must ask this question over and over and over and over.

For example, take the idea of an alternate universe where fat is considered beautiful. To transform this idea into a plot you might ask, What if a very obese woman from our universe ended up in this alternate universe? What would that be like for her? What if she suddenly was considered a drop-dead gorgeous in this alternate universe? What would that be like for her? What if she started losing weight? What if by losing weight, she ends up as unhappy in this universe as she was in the one she left behind?

Do you see how this works? You play with "what if."

Once you've asked the what if questions several times, you're ready to ask the next question.

2. Why?

The why question expands on your what if questions. You use why to flesh out the scenarios you came up with as a result of asking what if.

For example, one of the what if questions for the alternate universe idea could be, "What if the main character started losing weight?" To expand on this what if, you would ask, "Why?" Why would she lose weight? The why would take you back to what if. What if she lost weight because she was so happy that she no longer ate to cover her pain?

That what if would lead you to another why: Why, if she ate to cover pain, wouldn't she just eat again once she started losing weight in the new reality? Wouldn't that make her unhappy enough to binge again? Why wouldn't she just go back to eating a lot?

That why, again, will take you to a what if: What if she no longer wants to eat to cover pain-something in her experience of this new universe has changed her. She just doesn't know what it is.

What if?

Why?

Do you see the process?

You ask what if. That gives you information. Then you ask why. That gives you more information, which leads you back to what if.

It's impossible to structure novel plotting much more than this. It's a general brainstorming process that requires your mind to be free and full of possibility. This brainstorming is what will give you the foundation of what you need for writing a novel.

The Ultimate Step-By-Step Novel Writing System