Since writers are close to their work – the universe for the story that is in a writer’s head always is larger than the universe for the story that is on paper – they often may not recognize that a passage needs to be revised. Because of this, a troubled paragraph or chapter may go unrecognized by the writer…and if it is recognized, the writer may have no idea how to revise it.

Don’t give up on a passage and decide to let it stand simply because you’re unclear how to help it work better, though. That simply cheats your reader and your story. You wouldn’t give up on your child simply because you’re uncertain how to help her, after all, so why treat your story with any less dignity?

If you’re thinking of quitting on a passage – or even giving up on the entire writing project – you’re simply responding with emotion, specifically frustration and maybe even a little fear or anger. Such an intense reaction arises from self-doubt about your ability to get the story right.

Indeed, a lot of writing is trial and error. Sometimes what at the outset seems like a middling idea actually turns out to be the best cure. Sometimes what initially appears to be a fantastic idea turns out to be the entirely wrong prescription.

The beauty of writing is that there always are a number of ways to solve any given problem. Suppose the result of your main character’s effort to resolve a problem doesn’t deliver the necessary gravitas to help your protagonist grow. Simply have your character take an entirely tact toward resolving the issue, specifically one that leads to the result you desire. There are thousands of different approaches your main character might take. Or you might instead tweak the result. Or you might modify how the character grows through the story.

You may need to outline or pen several drafts of a scene to make it work. Whatever you do, keep at it. The satisfaction you feel upon succeeding will be the worth the effort.

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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 decade, I’ve helped more than 300 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.

A great way to promote your book by reducing your workload is letting others guest blog on your site.

Hosting a guest blogger offers a couple of benefits to your site. Most obviously, it frees you from having to come up with another blog entry. More importantly, though, it exposes others to your blog and website, as the guest blogger promotes his appearance on your pages. This brings new visitors to your site, and many of them probably have never heard of you or your book.

To find guest bloggers, simply invite others to take on that role. Offers can be made via your social media posts or by emailing someone who you think would write something of interest to your readers.

You may receive guest blogging requests from people you don’t know. Before letting just anyone guest blog at your site, though, you’ll want to know their credentials. They should be qualified to write for your site and should be of interest to your readers. Perhaps their credentials are being a fellow author, a publisher, a literary agent, or a book editor. Or possibly they are an expert in the area you write about, say a car designer if you wrote a book about car maintenance.

In addition, before giving them the go ahead to write their guest blog, have them pitch some topics. You might then say “no” to some, as you’ve already written about them or as they wouldn’t be of interest to your readers. Other topics you might tweak so they better fit your readers. Knowing in advance what one guest blogger will write about also means you can say “no” to that topic if a second or third guest blogger proposes it.

One guest blog submission to always say “no” to is one that has appeared elsewhere. Guest bloggers should create unique material for your site or interest in the post will be reduced. Type various phrases from the submission into a search engine to see if it has already ran or has simply been rewritten for your site.

Always let your guest blogger know that you reserve the right to edit their submission. You should edit it as well, at least to catch typos. Such editing includes the option to reduce the piece’s length (If your blog runs about 800 words, you don’t want a 3000-word entry posted.) and writing the headlines/subheads as you see best.

Also limit the number of submissions by any one guest blogger, usually to once a month at most. Some writers are prolific and can churn out a lot of material that soon crowds out your own entries. If looking to reduce your workload, opting for a variety of guest bloggers typically is better than relying on one or two writers.

Be sure to promote your guest blogger and his topic on your various social media. This can attract attention and visits from those readers who would be particularly interested in the post. It’s also another way for those interested in the guest blogger to stumble across your site as they conduct Internet searches about him.

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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 decade, I’ve helped more than 300 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.

Whenever trying to resolve a problem, a main character has to decide how to do so. Along the way, he may have to weigh the pros and cons of each possible solution. Writers go through this weighing process as trying to decide which decisions are the most believable and yields the greatest dramatic payoff.

Sometimes novice writers slow their plot by listing which choices weren’t made and then explaining ad nauseam why the character came to that decision. Such narration is called a “bogus alternative,” a term coined by American writer Lewis Shiner.

An example of a bogus alternative would be: I didn’t head into the desert, even though it was the shorter route, because I didn’t have enough water. It also meant I would have had to spend the night sleeping out in the open where coyotes lurk. Perhaps I should have just stayed where I was, but…

This cumbersome narration need not be told to the reader. The reader should be able to infer why the character made the decision he did. For example, before the character decides what to do, you might write: Two options faced me: A three-day journey across the broad desert plain or a week-long hike along the dry riverbed. I jiggled my half-empty canteen. Maybe there were puddles beneath overhangs on the riverbank.

From this, the reader knows he can’t take the shorter route because he’ll run out of water. That’s really that needs to be said.

Explaining afterward why the character didn’t make a choice only slows the plot. Writers ought to cut it from their story.

When writers employ bogus alternatives, they demonstrate a lack of confidence in either their own writing or in the reader. They believe that their plot isn’t clear enough so that readers won’t understand the main character’s actions. In other cases, the writer is simply penning his own thoughts about how to develop the story. He must learn to distinguish the difference between thinking about the story and telling the story.

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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 decade, I’ve helped more than 300 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.

Ever have an image in your head that would be great for your story, but you just can’t think of the right words to use so it gets on paper? You’re not alone. Many writers frequently face this problem.

During my years of editing authors’ short stories and novels, many have shared with me how they dealt with such struggles. Usually I find out by saying to them, “That was one great descriptive paragraph you wrote! How did you come up with it?” They typically grin, shake their head, and respond, “You know, that was the most difficult paragraph to write! I couldn’t get onto paper this jumble of images in my head!”

They then go on to tell me how they worked through it. Generally it involved one of the following five strategies:
• Freewriting – Rather than stress over getting the wording just right, simply write down everything that comes to mind. Sometimes it will be a list of images, other times it will be a long, run-on paragraph, but whichever approach you use, don’t worry about typos, punctuation, capitalization, sentence structure, chronological order, or anything else.
• Sensuous dissecting – Make a list of what’s in your head by describing it through each of the senses. What does it look like? What does it sound like? Smell like? Feel like? Taste like?
• Spatial examination – List what an object or landscape looks like by describing one section of it and then another section. For example, a landscape might be described by looking at the foreground, the middle ground, and then the distance. A person’s face might be described by looking at its top (eyes), midsection (nose and ears) and bottom (mouth and chin).
• Journalistic scrutiny – Standard newspaper ledes answer the questions of who, what, when, where, why and sometimes how. Do the same with your scene, by telling who you’re writing about, what that character is doing, the time of day it is, where the character is, and why she’s there.
• Concrete details – If you have an image in your head of someone experiencing an emotion, list all of the specific physical details that allow you to recognize what emotion the character is expressing. So don’t write that a character is “sad” but instead that he is frowning, walking with a drooping head and hands in his pockets, stifling a sniffle, speaking in a soft voice, and so on.

Each of these methods essentially gives you a verbal sketch of your image or scene. Now, like a master painter, you refine it – in your case as a writer through rewriting and editing.

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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 decade, I’ve helped more than 300 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.

One of the kindest things writers can do for their readers is employ local dexterity. This occurs when images, sentences, paragraphs and scenes are pleasurable to read because of their vividness.

Consider this passage from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby,” just as Gatsby is about to die:

Perhaps he didn’t believe it would come, and perhaps he no longer cared. If that was true, he must have felt that he lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream. He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he saw what a grotesque thing a rose is, and how raw the sunlight was on the scarcely created grass. A new world, material without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about…like that ashen, fantastic figure drifting toward him through the amorphous trees.

Notice how Fitzgerald describes Gatsby’s perceptions in a clear and striking manner. Because the images are life-like, readers feel it as they would an immediate experience.

Be careful of using local dexterity to hide the absence of drama or conflict, however. If you enjoyed reading a passage you wrote but keep telling yourself that nothing happened in it, you’re going overboard with local dexterity.

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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 decade, I’ve helped more than 300 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.

Many writers don’t enjoy promoting, or “marketing” their books. Besides being antithetical to the artistry of writing, promotion is time consuming, reducing the number of hours available to write.

Of course, for self-published writers, marketing is essential to ensure their book sells. Without some promotion, their title likely is to be lost among the more than 900 books published every day (in just the United States alone).

If you’re one of those writers who despise marketing, thinking a little about your feelings regarding this topic is important. Ask yourself, how do you feel about marketing your book? Why do you hold this view? What are your concerns about spending time promoting your book?

You may find that such thoughts help you reconcile your distaste for book promotion with the need to do it.

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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 decade, I’ve helped more than 300 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.

When self-publishing an ebook, you’ll likely run into a couple of terms about the “format” that your manuscript must appear in, specifically terms like EPUB and MOBI. While you need not be too concerned about how to create documents in each format, knowing the difference between the two can help you better understand the ebook creation process.

Each electronic device that you can use to access ebooks – a tablet, a Kindle, a Nook, a smartphone – uses an operating system. Because these devices are created by competing companies, they use different operating systems, each with their own benefits and drawbacks. Operating systems only can read information provided to it in certain formats.

Though there are many different formats that ebooks can appear in, generally, two major industry standards dominate.

One is called EPUB. This format is used by most major ebook retailers who produce ebooks, including Nook (Barnes and Noble), iPad (Apple), Kobo, and Sony Reader. The other is MOBI, which is used by Kindle (Amazon.com).

When self-publishing, you do need not know how to write software code in EPUB or MOBI. Currently, Kindle DP, Smashwords, and most other publishers of ebooks will reformat Microsoft Word documents into EPUB and MOBI formats for you when uploaded. However, to accomplish that, you may need to follow specific guidelines about how you create and format your Word document; for example, Smashwords does not allow tabs to be used (while Kindle DP has no problem with it).

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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 decade, I’ve helped more than 300 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.

To make a story more compelling, consider structuring it around an internal flaw in the main character. An internal flaw is some personal trait that makes a character less than perfect – perhaps being quick to anger, possibly suffering from jealousy or envy, maybe believing his outlook on the world is the only correct one. As none of us are perfect, an internal flaw makes a character who may otherwise be quite heroic appear more realistic to readers.

In a story, this internal flaw can be put to good effect, Begin with a central problem that sets the story into motion and that only the main character can resolve – except to actually reduce this central problem, the main character must overcome his inner flaw. The story’s plot then centers on the main character dealing with his internal flaw as he fails to adequately address the story’s central problem.

For example, if the central problem in a science fiction story is that an old, virtually invincible war machine has come “back to life” and is preying upon innocent starships and planetary colonies, the only solution may be to enlist the only living designer of the berserker to determine its weakness and stop it. This story can become much more compelling, however, if the only living designer is a hermit and believes his old age and frailty prevents him from being useful or capable anymore. His internal flaw – a lack of confidence and faith in himself – now must be overcome if civilization is to survive.

The central problems gives our main character adequate motivation to address his internal flaw but he does not have the emotional tools to overcome it. The story then may show how his failure to address his internal flaw means he can’t defeat the machine. It may show how when he slightly but inadequately addresses his internal flaw he fails to stop the berserker and takes this as a sign that he is right about his uselessness. The story may show that when he more adequately addresses his internal flaw he almost succeeds in resolving the central problem. The story ultimately, in its climax, must show him making the sacrifice of giving up this sense of uselessness that he’s become “comfortable” with in order for him to actually succeed in stopping the machine.

What makes this story so compelling is that it’s character-based. It shows the character growing. Many readers will be able to identify with and root for this hero. The berserker scenes become the special effects that helps draw readers into the story and that prevents the story from becoming pure navel gazing.

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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 decade, I’ve helped more than 300 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.

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.

The first rule to follow is to never use Microsoft Word’s built-in bullet list function. Most print-on-demand software such as what Kindle DP uses won’t recognize Microsoft’s coding for the bullet list. Instead, you get an indentation mess on the ereader.

Also avoid exotic fonts that won’t translate. For example, if a reader chooses to view the ereader text in an Arial font but you formatted the manuscript so that the bullet points are in Wingdings font, there’s no corresponding symbol in Arial. Instead, the bullet point ends up being a letter (In this case, often a “g” or an “n”.).

Further, avoid the poor man’s approach to bullet points, which involves not indenting the line and using a dash or an asterisk in place of a bullet point. This looks fairly unsophisticated.

The solution to creating translatable bullet points in Microsoft Word is quite simple. On a PC, hold down the ALT key and hit 7 on the keypad (Remember that you need to have NUM LOCK on to use a PC’s keypad.). On a Mac, hold down the OPTION key and hit 8 on the keypad.

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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 decade, I’ve helped more than 300 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.

When promoting your self-published book, the social media tool LinkedIn ought to play an important role in the marketing strategy. Further, knowing when to post can maximize your efforts.

According to a number of studies, the best time to post on LinkedIn is Tuesdays through Thursdays, either at noon or at 5-6 p.m.

Of course, these times are relative. If your business is national, you need to post over a longer spread of time than just noon or 5-6 p.m. in your time zone, or you’ll miss the peak times in other parts of the country. For example, if your business is based in Chicago (Central Time), you would aim messages for the East Coast (i.e. New York City, Boston, Raleigh) at 11 a.m. and 4-5 p.m. Central Time and messages for the West Coast (i.e. Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle) at 2 p.m. and 7-8 p.m. Central Time.

Bonus points to you if your post links to a site that looks good on mobile devices. That’s because 41% of visits to LinkedIn are from a mobile device with the percentage increasing.

The absolute worst time to post is Monday 10 p.m. through Tuesday 6 a.m. and Friday 10 p.m. through Saturday 6 a.m. Though people are on LinkedIn during this time, the number of users drops considerably compared to the earlier mentioned peak hours.

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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 decade, I’ve helped more than 300 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.