How to Establish Setting in Your Story’s Opening – Inventing Reality’s Newsletter for Mar. 11, 2025

Plotting Your Book: How to Establish Setting in Your Story’s Opening
Setting is the place and time in which the plot unfolds. The setting always must be established in a story’s opening lines. A setting helps anchor the story. READ MORE

How to “Show Don’t Tell” 
Read any writing tip article or book, and one piece of advice you’re sure to see is “Show don’t tell.” For many new writers – and even established ones – showing rather than telling is downright confusing. Just what does an editor mean when she notes “Show don’t tell” on your manuscript? Mastering Show Don’t Tell looks at 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! BUY BOOK

Writing Tip: Interesting Dialogue Moves Your Story Forward
When writing fiction, every sentence should move the story forward. To do that, characters must work toward achieving their goals. Your story then is about how well they accomplish their goals. For much of the story, they’ll fail to achieve their goals, either because of their own personal flaws or because they’ve been thwarted by a character who has other objectives. READ MORE

Self-Publishing Tip: How to Upload Your Ebook Cover at KindleDP
One you’ve created your ebook cover, the next step is to upload it. Here’s how to do that at Kindle Direct Publishing. READ MORE

This Week’s Podcast: How to Land a Television or Radio Interview
A great way to promote your book is through a radio or television interview. Most likely the program you land on boasts a loyal audience that’s highly interested in your book’s topic. This can quickly translate not just to additional book sales but requests to appear on other, similar programs. LISTEN TO PODCAST

Book Marketing Tip: Create Media Kit to Promote Your Book
To effectively market your book, you’ll need a media kit. This is a collection of materials that you send to newspapers, radio and television stations, magazines, bloggers and just about anyone else who might in some way mention your book. Sometimes it’s referred to as a press kit. READ MORE

Client Spotlight: “The Delta Wave” by RA Haskell
A recent editing client of mine – RA Haskell – has published his latest science fiction novel, The Delta Wave! Max Dyson has been dead seven times this year, and he’s never felt better. After an environmental catastrophe, adults are unable to sleep. Suicides are common. Desperate people try alcohol, drugs, and coma-parlors to find relief from their exhaustion. It’s rumored that doctors inside the city’s perimeter wall are to blame, but nothing alive can penetrate its defenses. Max invents a dangerous but effective method that provides curative rest. With it, he saves his girlfriend, Amanda, and she feels so rejuvenated, she lets everyone know, throwing the city’s factions into a war for control of Max’s miracle machine. Max devises a way to pass through the perimeter wall defenses, confront the doctors responsible for the mass insomnia, and save the city from anarchy. To succeed, he’ll have to die again, but this time without the help of his machine. 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 March 18, 2025. 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 400 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.