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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:

Sita from the Bay Area recently wrote asking for tips about how the finish her novel. She’s about three-quarters the way through it.

Her problem is not uncommon among writers. Many writers have unfinished novels and short stories sitting on their hard drives or as printouts in a desk drawer. Often coming up with a story idea isn’t a problem, but finding the time or knowing how to finish the work is.

There are several approaches any writer can use to finish their story:
• Set a deadline – Sometimes nothing works better than the challenge of a deadline. This forces you to avoid waiting for inspiration and to get down to the hard work of writing. Simply set a realistic goal for how many words or pages you will write a day. Figure out how many words/pages you still need to write to finish a work. Then divide those number of words/pages by how many words/pages you can write in a day. That gives you the number of days needed to complete your novel, and that many days out is your deadline. For example, suppose you can write 1,000 words a day. A short novel is about 70,000 words; suppose you’ve written 40,000 so far. That means you’ve got 30,000 words to go. At 1,000 words a day, that means you could finish the novel in 30 days (30,000/1,000). If today is Jan. 1, that means your deadline is midnight Jan. 30.
• Outline the rest of the book – Often writers get stalled because they’re not certain where their book is going. Plot out the rest of the story, describing beat-by-beat how you want the story to develop and how you want the main character to resolve the tale’s
• Find a writing partner – Someone else who also is trying to finish their story can be a great inspiration. He can offer encouragement and critiques of your work. If you meet regularly, ensuring you have text for one another to read can serve as a “deadline.”

Of course, sometimes the story is so poorly done in its opening sections that there really is no good reason to finish it. Despite that the story may be unpublishable, I’d recommend finishing it anyway. Completing one story makes completing the second one all that more easy, in the same way that completing your first 5k run makes finishing the second 5k run all that more easy. Finishing the story gives you the full experience of writing one, after all, and that may help you avoid pitfalls on the next go.

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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:

As writers, we often limit our thinking of press coverage to what we read – newspapers, magazines, online reviews. But broadcast mediums such as radio interviews also are an excellent way to promote your book.

While radio may not have a large audience compared to print or online mediums, it does have a very targeted audience: You can bet that the people most interested in your book or topic of discussion will be the ones who tune in to the radio broadcast. In addition, most radio stations today offer podcasts of interviews they’ve conducted, allowing anyone searching for a topic related to your book to stumble upon it during an Internet search.

Given that you can’t “edit” your live radio interview and that it likely will be available to listeners for many years to come, you’ll want to take this effort seriously.

Begin by researching the program and the interviewer. If their reputation is flaky, you may not want to do the interview. If you decide to go ahead, then learn about the format and structure of the program, such as how much of it is interview questions and how much of it is a call-in show. Knowing the program’s length also will be useful.

Learning the logistics of the interview is beneficial as well. For example, will the interview be live? Will it be done at a studio or via phone? If it’s live, be sure to arrive a half-hour early at the studios so that you’re not rushed (which could make you nervous or out of breath) when going on the air. In addition, bring an extra copy of your author’s bio and of the book for the interviewer.

Most radio interview hosts will give you the interview questions in advance; if they aren’t offered, ask for them. You also may want to suggest some ideas to the radio interviewer, describing your expertise. Most interviewers and producers will be appreciative of this. Once you know the questions, prepare and practice some answers ahead of time. While you don’t want to read answers from a sheet, you also don’t want to be caught off guard.

When devising your answers, keep them to about 20 seconds. Anything longer often will sound monotonous to listeners. In addition, use personal stories, specific examples, and analogies to illustrate points you’re making. That will go far in keeping listeners’ attention.

Never say anything you might regret – even if you’re not on the air. You never know what might accidentally go over the air or be recorded and then edited into a broadcast or recording. In addition, never offer anything that is “off the record” or “just between you and me.” In the journalism world, almost nothing is “off the record.”

Other ways to keep yourself out of trouble include: don’t cite statistics that you’re unsure of; don’t speak in jargon; don’t be defensive or argumentative; don’t speak for someone who’s not there; don’t say “no comment.”

If doing an interview in a radio studio, be sure to sit upright and comfortable. Check with the interviewer in advance about how far you should speak from the microphone. Also, see how the interviewer wants to be addressed (usually it’s by first name). Finally, just be yourself; you’ll be most relaxed when you act naturally.

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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 350 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the 7 Minutes a Day… 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 book marketing guidebooks:

Suffering from writer’s block or need to add some spunk to your writing? The problem may be that you need to change up your routine.

To that end, try this tip: Should you find your story at a dead end, maybe you need to back up and go down another road. Rather than asking yourself what sentence should come next, think of what other sentence could be written in its place. Does this lead you to other roads?

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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:

You may recall one or two of your elementary teachers advising you to spell a word the way you would say it. While that didn’t work for knight, it does work for nonetheless.

Because this adverb is really a collection of three words, many writers like to spell it as such with a space between each syllable. However, we actually speak the three words as if it were one, typically cutting a tic out of our pause between words in a sentence. So, nonetheless is the correct spelling.

In addition, when punctuating, a comma always goes after nonetheless. To wit: Nonetheless, Los Angeles is taking steps to become more cultural with the addition of new museums. If nonetheless appears in the middle of a sentence, the word is set off with commas on both sides of it, as in: The mayor of New York City, nonetheless, maintains that no American city can match his for cultural attractions.

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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:

To engage your readers – whether writing fiction or nonfiction – you’ll need to be utterly ruthless with your own words. In short, you’ll need to “murder your darlings.”

You’ve probably heard the axiom before. Though promoted by science fiction writer James Patrick Kelly, the advice is often given to writers of all genres, and for good reason.

Here’s the problem: Writers fall in love with their words. Like their own children or lovers, a writer’s words can do no wrong. And if they do, the transgression is highly forgivable given the surrounding words’ beauty.

But some words in our stories are “precious freeloaders who are too busy looking good to do any work,” as Kelly points out. He recommends eliminating those words, or to “murder your darlings.” (A side note here: The phrase actually is borrowed from Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, who wrote, “Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate of piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it – whole-heartedly – and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.” But who remembers Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch?)

Such freeloading words actually slow your story. They distract from the action, which in turn keeps readers from remaining focused on how your main character faces his central problem – and that latter conflict, after all, is the heart of the traditional story.

Beginning writers often make the mistake of trying to fix wordiness by adding words rather than cutting them. That’s like adding more fatty meat to the plate rather than trimming what you’ve already got, however.

What are some darlings that ought to be excised? Kelly identifies six “darlings” that can be killed:
• Adjectival and adverbial leeches – Descriptive words should be selected very carefully. They ought to create atmosphere and offer insights into the character, not decorate a paragraph.
• Clumsy entrances and exits – Too often stories contain “here to there” action that shows how a character got from one place to another. Providing that info typically is irrelevant to the story.
• Unnecessary scene or time switches – Many stories can take place in a couple of locations or during the course of a few hours. Switching the when and where of a story often forces you to waste words to re-establish the setting and mood as well as explaining why the change occurred.
• Overpopulation (extra characters) – Limit a story (especially short stories and novellas) to a few characters – the main character, the villain, the sidekick, a couple of background characters. Each additional character requires some description and takes attention away from the main character.
• Overdramatization – When every minor inconvenience is treated like a catastrophic event, readers quickly suffer from melodrama fatigue and detach from the story. Instead, the suspense should build so that each scene is progressively more problematic for the main character. This means you may need to scale back or even jettison some scenes from your story.
• Arriving early, staying late – When and where stories and scenes start and end is vital. Think of “The Iliad”: Homer doesn’t begin with the war’s start 10 years earlier but begins the tale in the days leading up to the final battle.

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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: