Inventing Reality Editing Service

Establish Characters’ Intentions in Every Scene – Inventing Reality’s Newsletter for June 10, 2025

Plotting Your Book: Establish Characters’ Intentions in Every Scene
Every time you start a story, you want to quickly establish a problem for the main character to solve and their intention of solving it. Maybe a hacked up dead body is found, and a detective intends to bring the murderer to justice. Possibly a divorced woman who’s been by her herself for the past five years sees a man she’s interested in and decides to meet him. Perhaps a starship captain finds a far-flung colony where his brother lived has been destroyed by some unknown force. READ MORE

Self-Publishing Tip: Everything You Need to Know to Self-Publish Your Paperback
You’ve written a book and want to publish it as a paperback. But how do you do that? Maybe you’ve watched a video about it, but your self-publishing house keeps rejecting what you’ve created. Or maybe they’ve accepted it, but its appearance is a bit ugly when compared to all of the other books out there. My book Self-Publish Your Paperback Bundle addresses all of those problems and more. A collection of guidebooks in the popular Storytelling 101 Quick Read series, this bundle includes Format Your Paperback, Design Your Paperback Cover, and Upload Your Paperback to KindleDP. The three titles take you through the entire self-publishing process. They answer all of your questions in a brief, easy to understand format and cut to the chase by providing practical, useful information that can be followed step-by-step. SEE BOOK

Writing Tip: Give Readers Sleepless Nights with Narrative Drive
Ever read story before bed and find it so gripping that you stay up far later than you should just to find out what is going to happen? If so, you’ve been a “victim” of narrative drive. READ MORE

Self-Publishing Tip: Don’t Trust Spellcheck, a Junior High-Aged Editor
So you’ve got your story typed in manuscript form and are about to send it out. You decide to do one more spell check before printing the final copy. Good idea, right? Wrong. READ MORE

This Week’s Podcast: Maintain ‘fictional dream’ when penning novel
When writing any story, your goal ought to be to create and maintain a fictional dream, or an “illusion that there is no filter between reader and events that the reader is actually experiencing what he is reading,” as the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Inc. defines it. LISTEN TO PODCAST

Book Marketing Tip: Stuff Your Book in a Little Free Library
If you’ve written multiple novels, and especially if they’re a series, you may want to consider sticking your book in a Little Free Library. READ MORE

Client Spotlight: “Mirrored Sublimation: Essays on the Early Work of Knut Hamsun” by Lisa Yamasaki
A recent editing client of mine has published her first book! In Mirrored Sublimation: Essays on the Early Work of Knut Hamsun, Lisa Yamasaki examines a small selection of the Norwegian dramatist Knut Hamsun’s early work that reveals the theme of sublimation from a psychoanalytic perspective. Through the combination of the literary analytical essays, academic braided essays, and the illustrations, she portrays how the three approaches to this topic contribute to a more enriched understanding of the topic and could further enhance the relationship between literature, art, and analysis. 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 June 17, 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.

Great Writing Quotes by Poet Elizabeth Bishop

It takes so many thousands of things coming together at the right moment just to make a poem that no one could ever really separate, and say this did this, that did that.

People say I am a perfectionist. The truth is that I often return to a poem started months or years before. I am very slow, that’s all.

Poetry has always seemed the most natural way of saying what I feel. I never intended to ‘be’ a poet, as I think people set out to do today. I never wanted to think about any label. It’s far more important to just keep writing poetry than to think of yourself as a poet whose job is to write poetry all the time. What do such people do during those long, infertile periods? Poetry should be as unconscious as possible.

Some poems begin as a set of words that you aren’t sure what they apply to, but eventually they accumulate and become lines, and then you see some pattern emerge. Sometimes an idea haunts me for a long time, though poems that start as ideas are much harder to write. It’s easier when they start out with a set of words that sound nice and don’t make much sense but eventually reveal their purpose. Again, the unconscious quality is very important. You don’t ask a poem what it means, you have to let it tell you.

One of the few good qualities I think I have as a poet is patience. I have endless patience. Sometimes I feel I should be angry at myself for being willing to wait 20 years for a poem to get finished, but I don’t think a good poet can afford to be in a rush.

I’m not trying to do anything specific in my poetry—only to please myself. The greatest challenge, for me, is to try and express difficult thoughts in plain language. I prize clarity and simplicity. I like to present complicated or mysterious ideas in the simplest ways possible. This is a discipline which many poets don’t see as important as I do. Complexity, I think, often obscures fuzzy thinking or verse masking as poetry. If poetry isn’t disciplined then probably the eye which observed or the mind which translated the experience lacked a certain discipline.

I am very object-struck. Critics have often written that I write more about things than people. This isn’t conscious on my part. I simply try to see things afresh. A certain curiosity about the world around is one of the most important things in life. It’s behind almost all poetry.

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My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer 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 the Storytelling 101 writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.

Check out some of my writing guidebooks:

Allow Main Character to Experience Crisis of Faith – Inventing Reality’s Newsletter for June 3, 2025

Plotting Your Book: Allow Main Character to Experience Crisis of Faith
A man vs. himself conflict often elevates a story’s suspense and depth. When a character must face a confrontation with himself, most readers can relate to him. Because of this, many writers introduce a crisis of faith into their story. READ MORE

Self-Publishing Advice: How to Upload Your Paperback to KindleDP
For those new to self-publishing, uploading your paperback often is a complex and frustrating process. Unfamiliar terms are used, questions that you as an author have never thought of answering are asked, and when errors occur there’s no real explanation as to how to fix them. And while online “tutorials” are offered, the articles either state the obvious or appear to have been written by software engineers rather than someone who actually understands your plight. My book Upload Your Paperback to KindleDP corrects all of that. The explanations in this book make the process easy to understand and to follow. After all, you just want to get your book uploaded so it’s up for sale, not wonder if you wasted your time writing it because of error messages! SEE BOOK

Writing Tip: Tighten Writing by Not Countersinking
One way for an author to slow a story is to employ “countersinking.” A term coined by science fiction writer Lewis Shiner, countersinking involves making explicit the very actions that the story implies. An example is: “We need to hide,” she said, asking him to seek cover. READ MORE

Self-Publishing Tip: How to Create Bulleted Lists in Ebooks
One of the big problems with ereaders is that they lack the ability to translate fancy symbols used to make bulleted lists in Microsoft Word. The result is that a bullet point ends up being a letter or set of numbers, which looks unprofessional and can confuse readers. READ MORE

This Week’s Podcast: Consider Organizing Short Stories into Fix-it Novel
If you like to write short stories, you probably are frustrated with the limited number of markets available out there to publish them in. And while ebooks allow you to sell short stories, the short ebooks still aren’t particularly popular (After all, if a reader why spend 99 cents on a short story when the same amount will get you a full-length novel?). You might want to write a fix-it novel. LISTEN TO PODCAST

Book Marketing Tip: Decide What Your Book’s Website Will Look Like
Before constructing your website or even deciding what pages you’ll have on your website, you’ll need to think about what the website page should look like. While each page will differ slightly – one might be a collection of publicity photos that can be downloaded while another is primarily a sample chapter of your book – each page should contain certain elements that are consistent throughout your site. This helps give your website a unity of appearance and will improve the reader’s ability to navigate it. READ MORE

Client Spotlight: “Set Sail” by Nevena Mrdalj
A recent editing client has published a manuscript that I worked with her on – Set Sail. An experienced charter yacht traveler, Nevena shares foolproof tips, boat-friendly recipes, and provisioning advice to make planning easier and cooking onboard a breeze. With easy-to-follow recipes inspired by Mediterranean and Caribbean flavors, Set Sail will help you plan step-by-step from home so that as soon as you arrive on your boat, you can focus on what really matters: an incredible vacation on the water! CHECK IT OUT

Great Writing Quotes by Author Aldous Huxley

Writers write to influence their readers, their preachers, their auditors, but always, at bottom, to be more themselves.

Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly — they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.

To write fiction, one needs a whole series of inspirations about people in an actual environment, and then a whole lot of work on the basis of those inspirations.

A bad book is as much of a labor to write as a good one, it comes as sincerely from the author’s soul.

I met, not long ago, a young man who aspired to become a novelist. Knowing that I was in the profession, he asked me to tell him how he should set to work to realize his ambition. I did my best to explain. “The first thing,” I said, “is to buy quite a lot of paper, a bottle of ink, and a pen. After that you merely have to write.”

I believe one would write better if the climate were bad. If there were a lot of wind and storms for example.

I write everything many times over. All my thoughts are second thoughts.

I’ve never discussed my writing with others much, but I don’t believe it can do any harm. I don’t think that there’s any risk that ideas or materials will evaporate.

Perhaps it’s good for one to suffer. Can an artist do anything if he’s happy? Would he ever want to do anything? What is art, after all, but a protest against the horrible inclemency of life?

Every man who knows how to read has it in his power to magnify himself, to multiply the ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant and interesting.

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Check out some of my writing guidebooks:

Utilize Both Internal and External Conflicts – Inventing Reality’s Newsletter for May 27, 2025

Plotting Your Book: Utilize Both Internal and External Conflicts
All stories center on conflict; arguably, the whole point of a story is to resolve some type of conflict. One way of thinking about conflict is to divide it into categories – internal and external. READ MORE

Self-Publishing Advice: How to Design Your Paperback Cover
Most potential readers of your paperback will see its front cover before anything written about it. It may be the thumbnail of your book cover that’s online or the cover facing forward on a bookstore shelf. If that cover compels them to read the book blurb or opening lines, you are a step closer to making a sale. How do you create a great cover for your book? My book Design Your Paperback Cover answers that question. It starts with what software/apps you need to design a cover, moves on to the cover’s various elements, and finally looks at uploading it to a print on demand company like Kindle Direct Publishing. SEE BOOK

Writing Tip: Don’t Overdescribe in Text Surrounding Dialogue
Too many details in the text surrounding dialogue can distract readers from what the characters say. This common dialogue mistake may seem to have less to with what is spoken than the words around it, but that’s not exactly the case. In fact, the problem usually a sign of poorly written dialogue. READ MORE

Self-Publishing Tip: Pros and Cons of Using Draft2Digital for Ebooks
A number of self-publishing companies exist, and most are rip-offs. Yes, they may turn out a quality-looking product, but they don’t get you an Amazon.com landing page for your title or you’re unable to sell your title across several platforms such as Kindle or Nook. Worse, they are extremely expensive. What about Draft2Digital? READ MORE

This Week’s Podcast: Consider Using Man vs. Nature Conflict in Story
When developing your story, you’ll want your characters to face a number of challenges or conflicts. One of the most basic of them is man vs. nature. In this conflict, the characters find their goals jeopardized by the natural forces of the universe: the cold of an ice age, dangerous plants and animals in an alien jungle, or the vacuum of space. LISTEN TO PODCAST

Book Marketing Tip: Promote Your Book at Writing Conferences
One way to promote your book is through a public appearance at a writing conference. Writing organizations, colleges and other groups offer a wide variety of such programs. Typically, they help writers develop their skills, learn the industry, and make connections. READ MORE

Client Spotlight: “The Picture Jumper” by Mary Missig
A year after his dad’s death, twelve-year-old Lincoln wonders whether his strait-laced but clearly struggling mom will ever tell him what really happened the night of the car accident. How did she walk away while his dad didn’t? Then, after a tearful wish and a clap of thunder, Lincoln discovers he can jump into pictures. Exploring the solar system, the Constitutional Convention, and the Titanic, Lincoln gathers clues about his dad’s death. But what will he learn about his dad, about his mom, and about himself? And can he keep his gift a secret when his teacher and classmates suspect something? I edited this novel in 2022. CHECK IT OUT

Great Writing Quotes by Author Charles W. Eliot

Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.

The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words.

No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters.

I don’t want the world to give me anything for my books except money enough to save me from the temptation to write only for money.

The words of genius have a wider meaning than the thought that prompted them.

…correct English is the slang of prigs who write history and essays. And the strongest slang of all is the slang of poets.

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Check out some of my writing guidebooks:

Build Rising Action Scenes Around Conflict – Inventing Reality’s Newsletter for May 20, 2025

Plotting Your Book: Build Rising Action Scenes Around Conflict
Anytime you’re writing a scene in the story’s rising action, you’ll want to treat it as a short story in and of itself. That means focusing on conflict. READ MORE

How to Format Your Paperback: Easy to Understand, Practical Tips
Your paperback needs to look good. Readers depend upon a clean, organized structure in your book to more easily navigate it. If your book looks unprofessional, readers are apt to think that your writing also is disorganized and incomplete. My book Format Your Paperback covers how to use Microsoft Word to format your self-published paperback and is good for both fiction and nonfiction titles. Using easy to understand and short explanations, it describes how to create a copyright page, a table of contents, the main text, page numbers, and much more. SEE BOOK

Writing Tip: Remain Wary of Using Fast-forward in Story
A literary device that’s often overused by novice writers is that of the fast-forward. This involves taking the story out of its timeline by going to a point in the future. In doing so, the scene reveals important events that are yet to occur in the story. It’s sometimes referred to as prolepsis. READ MORE

Self-Publishing Tip: Try ‘Taster Book’ if New to Self-Publishing
If new to self-publishing, consider doing a “taster book” first. A taster book has a low word count (and subsequently few pages) that you can use to learn the self-publishing process. If a fiction writer, it might be a collection of two or three short stories; if a nonfiction writer, it might be a three or four brief articles. READ MORE

This Week’s Podcast: How to Stay Focused on Writing One Book
Sometimes inspiration strikes for an entirely different book than the one you’re working on. Unfortunately, this can create the problem of stopping one book and starting a new one so that your original work never gets finished. Fortunately, there are plenty of ways to stay focused on writing one book. LISTEN TO PODCAST

Book Marketing Tip: Tips to Ensure a Successful Book Reading/Signing
The day has finally arrived: Your first book reading and signing! No doubt your stomach is aflutter, not just with excitement but with a little apprehension. What if you mess up in the reading? What if you can’t think of what to say when someone answers a question? What if the crowd finds you boring and starts to leave? READ MORE

Client Spotlight: “Shmehara” by Andi Kopek
An idea can be expressed in many mediums, and Andi Kopek decided to tackle four of them for his first book. “Shmehara” consists of 21 poems that Andi wrote, each accompanied by an illustration from an array of international artists and a video created by a filmmaker, as well as a soundtrack to go with the video. Proceeds from the books will be given to relief efforts for Ukrainian children displaced by the Russian invasion of that country. CHECK IT OUT

Great Writing Quotes by Poet Hilda Doolittle

…if you do not even understand what words say,/how can you expect to pass judgement/on what words conceal?

Words were her plague and words were her redemption.

I have tasted words, I have seen them.

Love is writing.

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Check out some of my writing guidebooks:

Basic Guidelines for Your Story’s Rising Action – Inventing Reality’s Newsletter for May 13, 2025

Plotting Your Book: Basic Guidelines for Your Story’s Rising Action
When developing the rising action section of your story, there a few simple guidelines to follow. Ensuring these guidelines aren’t violated will help keep the story moving forward and increase the dramatic tension. READ MORE

Everything You Must Know to Self-Publish Your Ebook
You’ve written a book and want to publish it as an ebook. But how do you do that? Maybe you’ve watched a video about it, but your self-publishing house keeps rejecting what you’ve created. Or maybe they’ve accepted it, but its appearance is less than adequate, especially compared to all of the other books out there. My book Self-Publish Your Ebook Bundle addresses all of those problems and more. A collection of guidebooks in the popular Storytelling 101 Quick Read Series, this bundle includes Format Your Ebook, Design Your Ebook Cover, and Upload Your Ebook to KindleDP. Those three titles take you through the entire self-publishing process, answering all of your questions in a brief, easy to understand format. SEE EBOOK

Writing Tip: Craft Powerful Story by Paying Attention to Milieu
Setting in your story is much more than geographical location or dates on a calendar. Another aspect of setting in a story is the milieu, or the social or cultural environment in which the action occurs. READ MORE

Self-Publishing Tip: First Sketch then Build Your Ebook Cover
Before designing your ebook cover, sketch what it will look like. This is the blueprint that you’ll follow. Creating a sketch to follow as you gather the materials needed to bring your design to fruition means you’ll save yourself time by not having to redo work if you’ve just pantsed it. READ MORE

This Week’s Podcast: Avoid Starting Sentences with ‘It’
By starting a sentence with “it,” you can confuse the reader. After all, what exactly does “it” refer to? LISTEN TO PODCAST

Book Marketing Tip: Pitch Book Through Back of Room Sales
One of the best way to sell your books is through Back of Room sales. This occurs when you give a presentation and have copies of your book(s) for sale on a table nearby – usually at the back or side of the room or just outside it. READ MORE

Client Spotlight: “Beyond Words: A Poetic Awakening” by J. Newman
A recent editing client, J. Newman, has published his first collection of poetry. J. Newman is a poetic force with something real to say. With a sharp intellect and a deep emotional current, he writes from a place few dare to explore—raw truth, layered thought, and soul-level reflection. His debut collection, Beyond Words: A Poetic Awakening, is more than just a book of poems; it’s a powerful journey through the heart, mind and spirit. Every piece is original, crafted to speak to the full spectrum of human experience—pain, joy, love, growth, and the quiet moments that often go unnoticed. Newman’s voice is bold yet profoundly human. Each poem is an invitation to slow down, look inward, and feel more deeply. His work doesn’t just inspire—it stays with you, offering both comfort and challenge as it pushes past the surface and speaks to the soul. CHECK IT OUT

Great Writing Quotes by Author T.S. Eliot

It’s not wise to violate the rules until you know how to observe them.

The poet’s mind is in fact a receptacle for seizing and storing up numberless feelings, phrases, images, which remain there until all the particles which can unite to form a new compound are present together.

Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.

Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.

If you start with a bang, you won’t end with a whimper.

Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.

What profession is more trying than that of author? After you finish a piece of work it only seems good to you for a few weeks; or if it seems good at all you are convinced that it is the last you will be able to write; and if it seems bad you wonder whether everything you have done isn’t poor stuff really; and it is one kind of agony while you are writing, and another kind when you aren’t.

An editor should tell the author his writing is better than it is. Not a lot better, a little better.

Writing every day is a way of keeping the engine running, and then something good may come out of it.

… in the case of many poets, that the most important thing for them to do … is to write as little as possible.

The historical sense compels a man to write not merely with his own generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the whole of literature from Homer and within it the whole of the literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order.

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Check out some of my writing guidebooks: