You Cannot Improve as a Writer until Actually Revising Something You Wrote – Inventing Reality’s Newsletter for Oct. 15, 2024

Writing Motivation: You Cannot Improve as a Writer until Actually Revising Something You Wrote
As writers, often we are our own worst critics. We’re typically either too ruthless or not critical enough of our own stories and articles. Worse, we sometimes even hate the good parts of our manuscript and love the poorly written sections. READ MORE

Marketing Tips: How to Build Your Author’s Website
You need a website if you’re a serious author. A website is the hub where readers can go to find out about your books, a little about you, where to find you on social media, how to contact you, and more. Fortunately, you can construct a website for very little cost right in the comfort of your own home. My book Build Your Author’s Website explains how, using easy to understand, practical explanations. It covers such diverse topics as finding a Website host, deciding what your website will look like, pages needed for your website, share buttons, pictures, your website text’s readability, and driving traffic to your website. The tips here come from an author and professional editor who began building websites more than two decades ago and has advised hundreds of his writing clients about the process. SEE BOOK

Writing Tip: Describe Setting from Characters’ Perspectives
Novice writers often possess a good understanding of how to write a great description of a story’s setting and of how to present evocative details. Indeed, the ability to create beautiful imagery through words often is a skill that encouraged many aspiring writers to want to write a book in the first place. READ MORE

Writing Course: Mastering Show Don’t Tell
My new writing course Mastering Show Don’t Tell helps you write vibrant stories by teaching how to identify and fix all the places where telling – or exposition – rears up in your writing: backstory; info dumps; backfill; vague descriptions; irrelevant character details; emotional states; motivational tells; narration; summarizing; poorly written dialogue; and more! Length of course: 15 lesson readings and quizzes 2-3 hours. Homework is up to the student. CHECK IT OUT

Self-Publishing Tip: Make Tables Readable in Your Self-Published Book
When self-publishing a nonfiction book, you probably will want to include tables of some sort. If writing a book about rock climbing, for example, you might include a list of the National Climbing Classification System. The problem with tables created in Microsoft Word is that they don’t resize well. READ MORE

This Week’s Podcast: Add Reaction Shots to Heighten Dramatic Tension
Description in your stories shouldn’t be limited to landscapes and introductions of characters. While most description in a story will be devoted to those purposes, there are other times when a single phrase or line of description can be inserted amid action and dialogue with great effectiveness. One such insertion is known as a “reaction shot.” LISTEN TO PODCAST

Book Marketing Tip: Promote Your Book by Guest Blogging
A great way to promote your book is by guest blogging, which is writing, for free, content that appears on another person’s blog. It’s sort of like being a guest host of a television program. READ MORE

Client Spotlight: “Be Limitless, Be Love” by Michael Toledo
This autumn I had the pleasure of formatting and uploading Michael Toledo’s short story collection Be Limitless, Be Love. From the cover: We all have a “calling.” Regardless of our age, race, sex, ethnicity, religious beliefs we all have “needs” that drive us as human beings. Much of the time, we aren’t aware of how these needs drive our behaviors.” The short stories in the collection address that by introducing readers to Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs through symbolism. CHECK IT OUT

$25 Off Your Next Edit!
For being a newsletter subscriber, please take $25 off your next edit with Inventing Reality Editing Service. When scheduling your edit, be sure to mention you’re a subscriber and give the email where you received this newsletter. Minimum order of $200. Offer expires Oct. 22, 2024. SCHEDULE EDIT

My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of both aspiring and published writers and offers a variety of self-publishing services. During the past 15 years, I’ve helped more than 350 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of a novel, the Storytelling 101 Quick Read series, four children’s books, more than 25 bestselling hiking guidebooks, and even a book of poetry. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.